However, the officially reported numbers only represent those who have been officially tested and added to the Covid positive scorecard.
What is the actual number of Covid positive individuals on this island? No one knows for certain because we haven’t tested all 24 million people. And it would be a waste of time, money and resources to attempt it.
We can make a wild assed guess and say that there are many many more than are being reported, but that’s all it would be is a WAG.
I’m not sure you understand how this works. If 80% of people getting tested are coming up positive, then obviously we don’t have enough tests to detect most of the new cases.
As Chase Nelson has observed, it seems that the under testing and under reporting of asymptomatic / mild cases is a matter of policy. The CECC has obviously been more concerned about the moderate - severe cases and the unhappy complications that can ensue from such infections.
In any case, President Tsai reportedly banged the table and asked for more PCR testing sites to be set up pronto.
Honestly the CECC has not seemed especially interested in more testing. But one hopes that earlier diagnosis in the moderate - severe range will lead to earlier treatment with antivirals, hopefully helping at least some of these folks . . .
False negative is very likely, especially at the beginning.
False positive is extremely unlikely.
Also, with rapid tests, you aren’t likely to test positive until multiple days after the onset of symptoms. Give it a few days and if you have it, you’ll likely get a positive result.
You don’t have to test all people, just a random sample…or use some other (statiscial) approach by using the current test data and transfer it to the whole population.