This week, a new resource that I’ve been working on for the past few months went live: a comprehensive source list including Long COVID patients and experts who are willing to talk to reporters. This source list project was a collaboration with Fiona Lowenstein, who’s a journalist, speaker, consultant, and founder of the Body Politic support group for Long COVID patients.
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Two years into the pandemic, you might think that, by now, schools would have figured out a strategy to continue teaching kids while keeping them safe from the coronavirus. Instead, the school situation is more chaotic than ever. Thousands of schools went online or closed entirely this week, likely more than in any other week since spring 2020. And yet: there is currently no national data source tracking COVID-19 cases in schools, and nine states fail to report any data on this crucial topic.
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In 2022, I would like to revamp readers’ options for donating in a way that aligns more closely with your interests. The survey will help me figure that out, as well as give me an overall sense of what you all would like to see from the COVID-19 Data Dispatch in 2022.
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As Omicron spreads rapidly through the U.S., this variant is driving record case numbers—and record demand for testing, including both PCR and rapid at-home tests. In other words, it feels harder than ever to get tested for COVID-19, largely because more people currently need a test due to recent exposure to the virus than at any other time during the pandemic.
Read MoreThe HHS changed their reporting requirements, no longer requiring hospitals to include COVID-19 deaths that occur at their facilities in daily reports. BUT: This is not the end of U.S. COVID-19 death reporting. The CDC’s death reporting system is continuing as usual.
Read MoreFeatured sources for the week of January 16 include Long COVID case estimates, disease severity, and vaccination dashboards.
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These update posts are getting shorter as time goes on, but we’re still learning about this variant! News items from this week include: Omicron now causing almost 100% of cases in the U.S., Northeast hotspots seem to be peaking, and more.
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A record number of COVID-19 patients are now receiving care in U.S. hospitals, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Even so, reports from the doctors and other staff working in these hospitals—conveyed in the news and on social media—suggest that the HHS data don’t capture the current crisis. The federal data may be reported with delays and fail to capture the impact of staffing shortages, obscuring the fact that many regions and individual hospitals are currently operating at 100% capacity.
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The U.S. once again broke COVID-19 records this week, reporting about 5.5 million new cases in total. Last winter, the highest number of cases reported in a single week was about 1.7 million; this past week, the country reported over one million cases just on Monday (though that number included backlogs from the prior weekend).
Read MoreOn Friday, a COVID-19 Data Dispatch reader asked for my help in interpreting a wildly high positivity rate: 544% in Washington, D.C. The source of this rate, she said, was John Hopkins University (JHU)’s COVID-19 dashboard.
Read MoreFeatured sources for the week of January 9 include hospital capacity, cruise ships, and severe cases averted by vaccines.
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Here are six other COVID-19 news items from the past week that didn’t quite warrant full posts. Including: CDC isolation guidance, a new reporting recipe, a variant that you should not freak out about, and more.
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As the Omicron surge continues, we are still learning more about this variant. Here are the major updates from this week, including: Omicron now causing over 90% of U.S. cases, hospitals becoming overwhelmed, possible peaks, and more.
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