Gov. Kay Ivey said reopening Alabama’s economy depends on widespread testing for COVID-19, the virus caused by coronavirus, but thus far there is no complete picture of how many people in the state have been tested.

"Nobody wants to open businesses more than I do. Until we get more testing done, we cannot re-open the economy,” Ivey said, adding that less than 1 percent of Alabama’s population has been tested for the virus.

That 1 percent number is incomplete, however.

Data from the Alabama Department of Public Health shows 48,387 coronavirus tests have been administered in Alabama with 5,231 positive cases. A note on the ADPH website, however, clarifies that while commercial labs are required to report both positive and negative results to the state, some are only reporting positive numbers.

That omission means the number of people tested in some areas of the state could be higher than what ADPH is reporting.

State Health Officer Scott Harris said in some cases there is a delay in getting the accurate number of negative test results.

“We know how many (tests) we’re doing here in public health,” Harris told WSFA in April. “And we get good numbers from the large commercial labs that have been testing and reporting to us for a long time, but there are a number of pop-up testing sites, that’s what we refer to them as, that are slow getting these results to us.

“We believe we’re capturing the positives quickly, but for negative test results, it’s still a manual process for them, and they’re not used to reporting electronically and so people are having to manually get that data put in. So, the number that you can see on our website shows the test results that we know about, but we know there are a lot more we just haven’t captured yet.​”

Madison County testing

According to the ADPH, there have been 2,611 total coronavirus tests in Madison with 202 confirmed cases, for a positive rate of 7.7 percent. However, data provided by Huntsville Hospital shows it has tested 5,986 people in Madison County with a positive rate of 3.27 percent. A total of 9,021 people have been tested across its service area with a positive rate of 3.44 percent.

Huntsville Hospital uses multiple lab options, including commercial and ADPH facilities, so some of the tests likely show up in both totals or reflect residents of other counties but the difference in the numbers reported by ADPH and the hospital is significant – 3,375 tests.

In a statement, ADPH said it continues to work with commercial labs to ensure they are reporting both positive and negative results.

“Early in the outbreak, ADPH was not receiving negative results from entities. This is continuing to improve, and ADPH has contacted labs to provide all of their data, both positive and negative,” ADPH’s Dr. Karen Landers said. “We are aware that a number of private labs both in and outside of Alabama are testing, although those numbers of labs can change as new entities come on board.

“While not having all negatives in the denominator could reduce the rate of positivity, the focus needs to remain on identifying cases and contact tracing while working to improve data submission moving forward,” she said.

Recently, ADPH reported an “outside entity” mistakenly marked COVID-19 lab test results as positive when they were, in fact, negative, causing an incorrect surge in the numbers. The outside entity has not been identified.