COVID-19 is still a public health emergency. At the moment, this is true according to both the general definition of this term and official declarations by the federal government. But the latter could change in the coming months, likely leading to more fragmentation in U.S. COVID-19 data.
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Last summer and fall, Idaho was completely overrun by the Delta variant. State leaders implemented crisis standards of care, a practice allowing hospitals to conserve their limited resources when they are becoming overwhelmed. All hospitals in Idaho were in crisis standards for weeks, with the northern Panhandle region remaining in this crisis mode for over 100 days.
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This past Friday, the CDC announced a major shift to its guidance for determining COVID-19 safety measures based on county-level community metrics. The new guidance is intended to replace COVID-19 thresholds that the agency developed last summer, during the Delta wave; here, the CDC is promoting a shift from using cases and test positivity for local decision-making to using metrics tied directly to the healthcare system.
Read MoreSources and updates for the week of February 13 include a potential change to federal hospitalization data and long-term heart health after COVID-19.
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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.
Read MoreDid you know that diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting are all common COVID-19 symptoms? I knew they were included on the CDC’s list of symptoms, but I didn’t realize how often these symptoms occur—or how nasty they can get—until I reported a story for Gothamist.
Read MoreCOVID-19 data sources and updates for the week of October 17 include new vaccination analyses on the CDC dashboard and mask diplomacy in Latin America.
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I invited Philip Nelson to contribute a post this week after reading his Tweets about his ongoing challenges in accessing his state’s hospitalization data. Basically, after Philip publicized a backend data service that enabled users to see daily COVID-19 patient numbers by individual South Carolina hospital, the state restricted this service’s use—essentially making the data impossible for outside researchers to analyze.
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A couple of additional items from this week’s COVID-19 headlines: children hospitalized with COVID-19, immunocompromised Americans now eligible for a third dose, and low cases linked to Lollapalooza.
Read MoreHospital worker vaccination rates, a new study modeling COVID-19 deaths, a New York Times mix-up, and more.
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