U.S. official COVID-19 counts not "reliable" due to unrecorded at-home tests: report

LOS ANGELES, April 29 (Xinhua) -- The official numbers of COVID-19 infections in the United States are not "exactly reliable" these days as the results of at-home rapid tests do not usually get recorded, The Atlantic has reported.

According to the report, testing practices have changed across the country, as at-home rapid tests have gone fully mainstream. These tests, however, do not usually get recorded in official case counts, it added.

"This means that our data could be missing a whole lot of infections across the country -- enough to obscure a large surge," it said.

"I do believe we are in a situation where there's more of a surge happening, a larger proportion of which is hidden from the usual sort of sensors that we have to detect them and to appreciate their magnitude," Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at the City University of New York, was quoted as saying.