SEATTLE — The latest data from the Department of Health (DOH) show the percentage of positive coronavirus (COVID-19) tests in Washington continues to decrease.
As of Wednesday, May 27, a total of 332,791 people have been tested for COVID-19 and of those, only 6.1% of tests came back positive, according to the DOH website.
But that number is a rolling average of all tests administered since the start of the coronavirus pandemic in February.
In the early days of the pandemic, testing for the virus was slow and it was happening primarily in nursing homes, where the infection rate was higher. In some respects, early and slow testing skewed the average.
So KING 5 broke down the last full week of DOH data considered complete and found between May 11 and May 17, only 4% of COVID-19 tests came back positive.
The average of positive COVID-19 tests has decreased every week since the start of the pandemic and that's the same trend nationally.
And as more people continue to get tested for COVID-19, the number of positive results will decrease faster.
In Washington, there are currently 20,181 confirmed coronavirus cases and of that 5.3%, or 1,078 cases, have resulted in death, according to the DOH.
