I frequently rely on the CDC’s Weekly Review, a weekly newsletter that provides COVID-19 data updates, as a source for my own National Numbers updates. The CDC newsletter is usually posted on Friday afternoons. But this summer, the schedule has become far less regular.
Last week, I had a new story published at FiveThirtyEight about the challenges a new CDC forecasting center is facing. Here’s one of the interviews I did for that piece, with epidemiologist Jason Salemi.
The CDC’s Community Levels are pretty useless when it comes to actually determining one’s COVID-19 risk. Moreover, the CDC isn’t even consistent with its calculations of these metrics.
Two new studies on Long COVID, published this week, provide an important reminder of the continued dangers this condition poses to people infected with the coronavirus—even after vaccination. Neither study provides wholly new information, but both are more comprehensive than many other U.S. papers on this condition as they’re based on large databases of electronic health records.
Last week, I pointed out a data gap on the CDC’s National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) dashboard: hundreds of sewershed sites on the dashboard have not been updated with recent data in weeks. This week, I’m excited to share an update on the situation, courtesy of Biobot.
There’s no sugarcoating it: we are in an extremely confusing and frustrating phase of the pandemic. We see the rising (yet undercounted) case numbers, we hear from friends and family members who have recently tested positive. And yet the CDC’s official COVID-19 guidance is still based on a mostly-green map, while local leaders refuse to reinstate mask mandates or other safety measures.
Sources and updates for the week of May 15 include COVID-19 deaths that could’ve been prevented by vaccines, the CDC potentially losing access to key data, testing declines, and more.
Something strange is going on with the CDC’s National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) data. Hundreds of sites on the CDC NWSS dashboard have been labeled as showing “no recent data” for a couple of weeks.
Anyone who’s pulled up the CDC’s National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) dashboard in the last week or two has likely noticed this trend: hundreds of sewershed sites are currently marked as “no recent data.”
This week, many headlines declared that the U.S. has reached one million COVID-19 deaths. While a major milestone, this number is actually far below the full impact of the pandemic; looking at excess deaths and demographic breakdowns allows us to get closer.