In L.A. County, an average of more than 222,000 tests were being recorded daily in January; in June, that figure had dropped to around 77,000 tests a day. Those figures do not include tests taken at home; the public health department said it currently has no system in place for people to report such results to L.A. County.

At the University of Washington, researchers who test blood to assess the true level of infections have estimated that only 14% of cases are being reported across the United States. Testing has never captured the full spread of the coronavirus, but the figure is much lower than in some earlier points in the pandemic, when more than 40% of cases were once estimated to be detected.

“Even the cases that are being detected are not being reported as frequently as they used to be,” said Ali H. Mokdad, professor of health metrics sciences at the university’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. “In many states, many counties, it’s only once a week.”