COVID-19 Data Dispatch

Category: Source spotlight

  • COVID source shout-out: People’s CDC in-person gathering guide

    The People’s CDC, a public health advocacy organization that seeks to provide COVID-19 communication and guidance where the federal CDC has failed, recently shared an update to its guide for safer in-person gatherings.

    The organization shared an updated, abbreviated version of the guide on its Substack this weekend, in advance of a more detailed update in the works for its web toolkit. This guide walks readers through ways that they can organize gatherings with lower COVID-19 risk, including actions to take before, during, and after an event. It’s written in accessible language and cites scientific sources.

    I am a big fan of the People’s CDC (frequently citing their work in this newsletter and freelance articles), and this guide is one of my favorite resources they’ve developed. If you’re hosting an event, traveling, or taking part in any other kind of in-person gathering this weekend, I recommend checking out their guidance.

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  • COVID source callout: CDC infection control committee may roll back protections

    A little-known CDC advisory committee is suddenly in the public spotlight, as it considers recommending fewer safety measures to reduce infection in hospitals and other healthcare settings. Despite major pushback at a recent meeting, it’s unclear whether this committee will actually live up to its infection control duties.

    The Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee, or HICPAC, is a group of experts that advises the CDC on infectious disease safety measures in healthcare settings. It develops guidance that is rigorously followed across U.S. facilities, and the guidance is due for an update this year—for the first time since COVID-19 hit.

    In the last three years, healthcare and public health workers have learned a lot about the importance of masks and clean air for reducing respiratory disease risk. You might think that HICPAC would acknowledge this in its updated guidance, calling for hospitals to use high-quality masks and ventilation. Instead, however, HICPAC’s guidance disregards the last three years of airborne virus research, suggesting for example that N95s aren’t more protective than surgical masks and that masking is only needed when a disease is spreading very widely.

    These guidelines could have massive implications for the healthcare system. Many high-risk people are already hesitant to go to the doctor, in a time when mask requirements in these settings have largely been lifted. COVID-19 is spreading widely in these settings, limited data suggest. The new guidelines, if adopted, would extend the current COVID-19 “normal” to many other diseases, from seasonal flu to new viruses that may emerge.

    Naturally, a coalition of better-informed individuals and organizations (healthcare workers, scientists, patients, etc.) are pushing back against HICPAC. At a public meeting this past Tuesday, many attendees spoke against the guidance change, citing health research as well as their own experiences in the last three years. The committee failed to meaningfully acknowledge this criticism; in fact, it cut off the public comment period after just 40 minutes, leaving many attendees unable to share their feedback.

    Transparency concerns about HICPAC—which doesn’t usually share public updates or livestream its meetings—add to concerns about the committee’s guidance decisions. But the pressure is on for HICPAC to respond to its critics, improve its new guidance, and live up to its title.

    Further reading and how to get involved:

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  • COVID source callout: Nebraska stops reporting wastewater data

    The Nebraska state health department has discontinued its wastewater surveillance data page, depriving residents of important COVID-19 updates at a time when cases are rising.

    Multiple local news outlets in the state (including the Omaha World-Herald, the Lincoln Journal-Star, and the radio station KIOS) reported the removal. Nebraska’s health department previously shared wastewater updates through PDF reports, published every two weeks; these reports included recent COVID-19 trends along with data about variants sequenced in the state’s sewage.

    Now, the health department’s wastewater surveillance page redirects to an error message, reading: “This page is currently unavailable.” The change came as wastewater data in Nebraska and across the country were showing an increase in coronavirus spread, local reporters covering the story have pointed out.

    Nebraska’s health department discontinued this webpage due to the federal public health emergency’s end in May, a spokesperson for the agency told the World-Herald and Journal-Star. The agency is still tracking wastewater data, the spokesperson said. But it’s apparently redesigning its public website to include as little information as possible.

    “Data continues to be tracked for that program and is available upon request,” the agency spokesperson told local reporters. Nebraska’s wastewater data still appear to be available on the CDC’s dashboard, as well. But new data for Nebraska sites were most recently added to that dashboard in early August, so it’s unclear whether CDC updates will continue after the local page’s end.

    Even if the Nebraska health department does continue sending data to the CDC, the national dashboard is less accessible to residents hoping to keep track of COVID-19 trends than the state’s reports were. As I’ve written before, local dashboards and alert systems are always better when it comes to tailoring updates for a specific community.

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  • COVID source call-out: When will we get fall boosters?

    The CDC expects that our next round of COVID-19 booster shots will be available in early fall, likely late September or early October. But this limited information has been distributed not through formal reports or press releases—rather, through the new CDC director’s media appearances.

    These booster shots will be targeted to Omicron XBB.1.5, one of the most recently-circulating subvariants. It’ll be an important immunity upgrade, especially for seniors and other higher-risk people, as the last round of updated vaccines came almost a year ago. Plus, these new boosters are basically the federal government’s one initiative to combat COVID-19 as we head into another inevitable fall and winter of respiratory illness.

    Considering the shots’ importance, we have surprisingly little information about when they’ll be available or how they will be distributed. During one media appearance (on NPR’s All Things Considered in early August), CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen said that the boosters would be available “probably in the early October time frame.” Then, a week later (on former federal official Andy Slavitt’s podcast), she said boosters would come “by the third or fourth week of September.”

    In both interviews, Cohen shared few details beyond this vague timeline. I would love to see more details from the federal government about their plans—for producing the shots, and also for distributing them in our post-federal emergency landscape. It also seems unclear how the CDC and other agencies will promote the boosters, considering how most officials are now pretending COVID-19 is no longer a concern. (Case in point: Cohen’s many mask-less appearances since she started as CDC director.)

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  • COVID source callout: Medicaid unwinding

    The Biden administration has recently boasted that the number of Americans without health insurance hit a “record low” earlier this year. But that statement rings hollow when you consider how millions of people will lose their insurance in the coming months, thanks to the end of the federal COVID-19 emergency.

    Early in the pandemic, the federal government gave states more funding for Medicaid programs, under the condition that they kept people enrolled in insurance rather than reevaluating their eligibility every year. This change led more people to be covered under Medicaid than ever before: about 94 million in total.

    Now, however, the COVID-19 emergency has ended and states are able to reevaluate who qualifies for Medicaid, in a process called “Medicaid unwinding.” Every state has a different evaluation process, many of them involving a lot of bureaucratic hassle (waiting for paperwork in the mail, finding the right forms to fill out online, enrolling in different health insurance if you no longer qualify for Medicaid, etc.).

    The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released new data this week about people losing access to Medicaid. About 700,000 people lost their health insurance in April 2023 alone, CMS reports. That accounts for just 18 states that had started their reevaluation process in April; experts estimate that millions more will lose coverage in the coming months.

    Losing health insurance during the ongoing pandemic means losing access to COVID-19 tests, vaccines, treatments, and care for Long COVID, not to mention all the routine health services that people need. Doesn’t really seem like something the Biden administration should be bragging about.

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  • COVID source shout-out: Ed Yong’s Long COVID coverage

    Ed Yong, a widely-admired science journalist, recently announced that he’s leaving his position at The Atlantic after eight years at the publication. He also published the latest in a series of articles explaining the challenges of Long COVID, a subject that he’s become well-known for covering.

    I have been a big fan of Yong’s for a long time; reading his work when I was in college was one of my inspirations for getting into science writing. But his COVID-19 coverage has been especially informative and inspirational. In particular, he was one of the first journalists to write about Long COVID back in 2020 and has remained a leading writer on the topic since then. His work has brought wider recognition to the long-haulers seeking research and support.

    His latest story, like his others, is a master class in weaving together patient experiences and scientific insights. It covers fatigue and post-exertional malaise, two of the most common—and most debilitating—symptoms of Long COVID and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). As people with those conditions have shared the article on social media, I’ve seen many say that it offers poignant descriptions of these symptoms and insightful understanding of their experiences.

    If you haven’t read this article yet, please check it out. (Feel free to email me if you have a hard time accessing it through the paywall.) And I think I can speak for many readers here when I express gratitude for Ed Yong’s COVID-19 work over the last three years, and excitement for what he’ll do next!  

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  • COVID source callout: NYT continues to push misleading information

    Longtime readers may remember that I am no fan of “The Morning,” a daily newsletter from the New York Times that has frequently downplayed COVID-19 in recent years. Last summer, for example, I called out the newsletter for misleading reporting about who was dying most from COVID-19.

    Well, this week, the newsletter’s primary author, David Leonhardt, has done it again. Leonhardt wrote on Monday that “the pandemic really is over.” As evidence, he pointed to excess deaths (i.e. deaths above expected norms from past years), writing that this metric has returned to a pre-COVID-19 baseline.

    It is true that excess deaths have been low since early 2023, when the country’s holiday COVID-19 surge concluded. And sure, this is good news about COVID-19’s current impact on mortality. You can see the CDC’s estimates here. However, Leonhardt’s newsletter fails to mention several caveats:

    • If the pandemic were truly “over,” excess deaths would actually be below historical averages, not at them, to reflect people who had died prematurely of COVID-19 in the last three years. (Health law scholar Blake Murdoch pointed this out on Twitter.)
    • Current death data are seriously undercounting COVID-19 deaths, thanks to the now-very-limited availability of COVID-19 tests combined with limited surveillance following the end of the federal public health emergency. The CDC revises up its estimates every week.
    • Excess death data, in general, are typically considered preliminary estimates for about a year. So, the data Leonhardt sites are preliminary and likely to be revised up once the CDC compiles more information from death certificates.
    • The pandemic has disproportionately impacted people of color and other vulnerable groups. Analysis from APM Research Lab shows that this pattern has continued through the first half of 2023.
    • Plenty of other metrics (including wastewater surveillance, hospitalizations, and the virus’ continued evolution) suggest that COVID-19 is still circulating and still making people sick. The U.S. is likely heading into a summer surge right now, in fact.
    • Leonhardt fails to mention Long COVID, one of the most dire outcomes of COVID-19. Even though millions of people are still dealing with prolonged symptoms.

    So, for whom is the pandemic really “over”?  It might be over for Leonhardt himself, but it’s not over for people with Long COVID, people still mourning lost loved ones, high-risk people still taking every precaution, people who will get infected this summer, and so many more. All of these people challenge the NYT’s misleading narrative.

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  • COVID source shout-out: Free PCR tests from Walgreens

    In May 2023, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Walgreens, and Labcorp started offering free PCR tests at select pharmacy locations. The program appears to still be available following the end of the federal public health emergency.

    Through the program, Americans can pick up a free kit to take a PCR test at home, then ship their sample to Labcorp for analysis. No insurance information is required. Results should be available within two days of the lab receiving the patient’s sample, according to Walgreens. About 1,000 Walgreens locations across the country are stocking these free tests, but they need to be picked up in person.

    I learned about this Walgreens program from the People’s CDC, which included it in their Weather Report newsletter on July 10. The newsletter suggests this program is recent, though I haven’t been able to find any other news about it besides a press release from May 2022. So, either tests are still available from the original iteration of the program or Walgreens revamped it recently.

    Either way, this Walgreens program is a helpful option for anyone looking to get a free PCR test—though it’s obviously far below the extensive, accessible PCR testing network that the U.S. continues to need. If any readers try this out, I would be curious to learn about your experience!

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  • COVID source shout-out: excess deaths estimates

    This week, a team of demography researchers published a paper sharing excess death estimates by county, for the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. The team, led by Andrew Stokes at Boston University, has been analyzing excess death data for years in order to understand the true toll of COVID-19 on the U.S.

    To measure excess deaths, researchers compare the number of deaths that they’d expect to occur in a given place, over a given timeframe—based on modeling from historical data—to the number of deaths that actually happened. This metric is a helpful one for COVID-19 research, because official COVID-19 deaths are undercounted for a variety of reasons. (To name a few: lack of standards for death certificates, politicization of the pandemic, health equity issues.)

    Especially now that official COVID-19 data are becoming less and less reliable, I see excess deaths as a useful avenue for continued reporting on the pandemic. And for any journalists or researchers interested in looking into this issue, Stokes and his team’s work is a great starting point. I collaborated with them for MuckRock’s Uncounted project, using a preprint iteration of the paper published this week.

    For more info on this topic, see the Uncounted project and this 2021 post about excess death data from the CDC.

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  • COVID source shout-out: Advocating for masks in healthcare

    A reader recently sent me this petition to the Illinois state legislature, which asks lawmakers to request that the state health department reconsider its position on masks in healthcare settings. This petition is one of many advocacy efforts that have pushed for healthcare organizations to continue prioritizing COVID-19 safety.

    In Illinois: the state health department ended its mask requirement in healthcare settings on May 11, timed with the end of the public health emergency. This petition, authored by patients, doctors, and researchers in Illinois, requests that legislators tell the health department that this choice was a mistake. Illinois residents can sign onto it here.

    For readers outside Illinois who’d like to get involved with these efforts, Mandate Masks US, the COVID Advocacy Initiative, and COVID Safe Campus have compiled a toolkit to advocate for masks in healthcare with political and healthcare organizations. The People’s CDC offers some resources in this area as well. While the advocacy groups’ Week of Action on this issue may have passed (it took place in mid-May), there are still many ways to help push for safer healthcare settings.

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