Don’t believe everything you read from the LA Times or from the County Health Department regarding when it comes to rising case numbers in Los Angeles County.

When asked to comment on Saturday’s report of 1,568 new COVID-19 cases and 58 related deaths (marking the fifth day in a row the county reported more than 1,200 new cases), Dr. Barbara Ferrer the LA County Health Director said the following:

“The state did ask us to take a hard look at the fact that our case counts are high,” Barbara Ferrer, the L.A. County health director, said Friday. “But we’ve been working with them, and we’ve shown them our data that indicates that’s really, at this point, a result of a lot of testing.”

Apparently Dr. Ferrer must be looking at different data than are published on their #COVID-19 data portal. Testing rates in Los Angeles County have declined for the past three weeks in a row (Figure 1). This is in stark contrast to testing rates in San Francisco which have almost doubled over those same three weeks. San Francisco performed on average 277.31 tests per 100,000 population a day for the week ending 6/12/2020 while Los Angeles only performed 124.33.

So no, Dr. Ferrer, it really isn’t the result of a lot of testing.