# A decrease in the coverage percentage is not a reliable metric

**URL:** <https://community.codecov.com/t/a-decrease-in-the-coverage-percentage-is-not-a-reliable-metric/2621>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [March 5, 2021, 4:00pm UTC](https://community.codecov.com/t/a-decrease-in-the-coverage-percentage-is-not-a-reliable-metric/2621 "2021-03-05T16:00:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![jerrod](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/community.codecov.com/jerrod/32/41_2.png) [@jerrod](https://community.codecov.com/u/jerrod)\
**Post date:** [March 5, 2021, 5:20pm UTC](https://community.codecov.com/t/a-decrease-in-the-coverage-percentage-is-not-a-reliable-metric/2621/2 "2021-03-05T17:20:41Z")

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Hey @hexagonrecursion, great point here. And thanks for making the POC repo to show what you meant.

A few points here:

1. Yes, though often removing code is a very healthy choice for a project, removing covered code can have the impact of _lowering_ code coverage due to the math of numerator / denominator of code coverage.

—\> 3/4 covered lines = 75%, 4/5 covered lines = 80%. Boo, percentages. We do try to make up for this using something we call “offset coverage”: [https://docs.codecov.io/docs/coverage-offset](https://docs.codecov.io/docs/coverage-offset)

1. If you only want to look at the added lines, that’s where `patch` coverage comes from. [Status Checks](https://docs.codecov.io/docs/commit-status#patch-status)

In your example commit you sent, the `patch` status would be 100% as you added only covered lines.

 ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/uploads/codecov/original/2X/8/846ba124428a8f3112bfbbe920aebb15c2719d4d.png)

Nonetheless, let me make sure the `coverage offset` concept is working as expected from #1.

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_[View the full topic](https://community.codecov.com/t/a-decrease-in-the-coverage-percentage-is-not-a-reliable-metric/2621)._