GRANT COUNTY — Commenting about the recent rise in new confirmed coronavirus cases in Grant County, county health officer Dr. Alexander Brzezny said the surge is largely not explained by a recent increase in overall testing.

“It is unlikely that the increase in cases is due to an increase in testing,” Brzezny said at a Thursday news briefing.

Brzezny pointed to a number of data points suggesting that the virus is accelerating faster than increases in testing can account for, including an increase in the rate of tests coming back positive. The higher that rate is, the more cases are going unreported, health officials have argued for months.

The overall rate of all tests that returned as positive for the virus had declined from around 13.5 percent in late March to around 7.5 percent in mid-May, according to data from the Grant County Health District. But in recent weeks, Brzezny noted, that rate was closer to 20 percent, 10 times higher than the state’s recommendations for counties to continue reopening their economies.

Brzezny also pointed to the speed at which the overall positive cases has increased, with it taking 86 days for the first 200 cases to be reported and only around 26 days for the next 200.

“We certainly haven’t increased the number of tests threefold in the span of those days,” Brzezny added.

Brzezny also reiterated a call for individuals to wear face coverings while in public to slow the spread of the virus, claiming that current trends would keep the county from reopening its economy any further. He pointed to one of several criteria to reopen, which recommends that a county have no more than 25 new cases per 100,000 people in a two-week period.

“That rate as of June 6 was 46, as of June 15 it was 102, as of June 19, 162, and as of yesterday, 252,” Brzezny said. “We are now 10 times the state metric, and, again, our testing did not increase tenfold.”