When the public health emergency ends this spring, COVID-19 testing is going to move further in two separate directions: rapid, at-home tests at the individual level, and wastewater testing at the community level. That was my main takeaway from an online event last Tuesday, hosted by Arizona State University and the State and Territory Alliance for Testing.
Sources and updates for the week of January 22 include respiratory virus hospitalizations, new excess death estimates, wastewater testing on airplanes, and more.
This week, the National Institutes of Health launched a new website that allows people to anonymously report their at-home test results. While I’m skeptical about how much useful data will actually result from the site, it could be a helpful tool to gauge how willing Americans are to self-report test results.
On September 2, 2022, the federal government stopped taking orders for free at-home COVID-19 tests. The day this program ended, I sent a public records request to the federal government asking for data on how many tests were distributed. I just received some data back from my request; here’s what the numbers show.
Remember how, in December, the CDC changed its recommendations for people who’d tested positive for COVID-19 to isolating for only five days instead of ten? And a bunch of experts were like, “Wait a second, I’m not sure if that’s sound science?” Well, studies since this guidance was changed have shown that, actually, a lot of people with COVID-19 are still contagious after five days. Yet the CDC has not revised its guidance at all.
Sources and updates for the week of April 10 include safety for large, indoor events; state data reporting frequencies; a new Long COVID task force; COVID-19 testing in schools; and more.
Sources and updates for the week of March 27 include workplace violence for public health officials, at-home tests, and another round of booster shots.