COVID-19 Data Dispatch

Tag: CDC

  • New CDC report vastly underestimates deaths with Long COVID

    New CDC report vastly underestimates deaths with Long COVID

    The 3,500 Long COVID-related deaths identified by the CDC’s review of death certificates are likely a significant undercount of mortality caused by this condition, experts say. Chart by Karen Wang; see the interactive version on MuckRock.

    On Wednesday, the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NHCS) released a major report on deaths from Long COVID. To identify a small (but significant) number of deaths, NCHS researchers searched through the text of death certificates for Long COVID-related terms. Their study demonstrates how bad our current health data systems are at capturing the results of chronic disease.

    My colleagues and I at MuckRock did a similar analysis to the CDC’s, searching death certificate data that we received through public records requests and partnerships in Minnesota, New Mexico, and counties in California and Illinois. You can read our full story here and explore the death certificate data we analyzed on GitHub.

    Here are the main findings from both analyses:

    • The CDC study is an important milestone in recognizing the reality of Long COVID: this is a serious, chronic disease that can lead to death for some patients. It’s not just an outcome of acute COVID-19.
    • From its national death certificate search, NCHS identified 3,544 deaths with Long COVID as a cause or contributing factor. This is almost certainly a major undercount, experts told me (and told other reporters who wrote about the study.)
    • This number is an undercount because we’re essentially seeing two poor-quality data systems intersect. Long COVID is undercounted in clinical settings because we lack standard diagnostic tools and widespread medical education about it—most doctors wouldn’t think to put it on a death certificate as a result. And the U.S.’s death investigation system is uneven and under-resourced, leading to inconsistencies in tracking even well-known medical conditions.
    • On top of these problems, when Long COVID is diagnosed, it tends to be among people who had severe cases of acute COVID-19 followed by difficulty recovering, experts told me. David Putrino and Ziyad Al-Aly, two leading Long COVID researchers, both pointed to the NCHS’s trend towards identifying Long COVID deaths among older adults (over age 75) as an example of this pattern in action, since this group is at higher risk for more severe acute symptoms.
    • The NCHS count of deaths thus misses Long COVID patients with symptoms similar to myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), which often arises after a milder initial case. It also misses people who have vascular impacts from a COVID-19 case, like a premature heart attack or stroke months after infection—something Al-Aly and his team have studied in depth. And, crucially, the NCHS count misses people who died from suicide, after suffering from severe mental health consequences of Long COVID.
    • While the NCHS count of Long COVID deaths is far too low to be accurate, the researchers did find more deaths as the pandemic went on—with the highest number in February 2022, following the first Omicron surge. This pattern could suggest increased recognition of Long COVID among the medical community.
    • The NCHS primarily identified Long COVID deaths among white people, even though acute COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted people of color in the U.S. Experts say this mismatch could reflect gaps in access to a diagnosis and care for Long COVID: if white people are more likely to be seen by a doctor who can accurately diagnose them, they will be overrepresented in Long COVID datasets. Putrino called this “a health disparity on top of a health disparity.”
    • MuckRock’s analysis of death certificate data in select states similarly found that most deaths labeled as Long COVID were among seniors and white people. The trends varied by state, though, reflecting differences in populations and in local death reporting systems. For example in New Mexico, which has a statewide medical examiner’s office (rather than a looser system of county coroners), three-fourths of the Long COVID deaths were among Hispanic or Indigenous Americans.
    • Our story also includes details about the RECOVER initiative’s autopsy study, which aims to use extensive postmortem testing on people who might have died from acute COVID-19 or Long COVID to identify biological patterns. Like the rest of RECOVER, this study is moving slowly and facing logistical challenges: about 85 patients have been enrolled so far, an investigator at New York University said.

    Overall, the NCHS study suggests an urgent need for more medical education about Long COVID, especially as the CDC works to implement a new death code specific to this chronic condition. We also need broader outreach about the consequences of Long COVID. To quote from the story:

    “Institutions like the CDC should do more to educate people about the long-term problems that could follow a COVID-19 case, said Hannah Davis, the patient researcher. “We need public warnings about risks of heart attack, stroke and other clotting conditions, especially in the first few months after COVID-19 infection,” she said, along with warnings about potential links to conditions like diabetes, Alzheimer’s and cancer.

    And we need other methods of studying Long COVID outcomes that don’t rely on a deeply flawed death investigation system. These could include studies of excess mortality following COVID-19 cases, Long COVID patient registries that monitor people long-term, and collaborations with patient groups to track suicides.

    For any reporters and editors who may be interested, MuckRock’s story is free for other outlets to republish.

    More Long COVID reporting

  • Sources and updates, December 11

    • 2022 America’s Health Rankings released: This week, the United Health Foundation released its 2022 edition of America’s Health Rankings, a comprehensive report providing data for more than 80 different health metrics at national and state levels. The 2022 report includes new metrics tailored to show COVID-related disparities; for example, Black and Hispanic Americans had higher rates of losing friends and family members to COVID-19 compared to other groups. I’ve used data from past iterations of this report in stories before, and I’m looking forward to digging into the 2022 edition.
    • FDA authorizes bivalent boosters for young kids: This week, the FDA revised the emergency use authorizations (EUAs) of both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s updated, Omicron-specific booster shots to include children between six months and five years old. Kids who previously got two shots of Moderna’s vaccine for this age group can receive a bivalent booster two months later, while kids who got two shots of Pfizer’s vaccine can receive a bivalent booster as their third dose. (Remember, Pfizer’s vaccine for this age group includes three doses.) The updated EUAs will help protect young children from Omicron infection, though uptake will likely be low.
    • CDC updates breakthrough case data: Speaking of the updated boosters: the CDC recently added data on these shots to its analysis of COVID-19 cases and deaths by vaccination status. In September, people who had received a bivalent, Omicron-specific boosters had a 15 times lower risk of dying from COVID-19 compared to unvaccinated people; and in October, bivalent-boosted people had a three times lower risk of testing positive compared to the unvaccinated. The CDC will update these data on a monthly basis.
    • Director Walensky discusses authority challenges: One bit of coverage from the Milken Future of Health Summit that caught my attention: CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky talked about the agency’s limitations in collecting data from states, reports Rachel Cohrs at STAT News. Walensky specifically highlighted the challenges that the CDC might face in collecting data when the public health emergency for COVID-19 ends, something I’ve previously covered in this publication.
    • Boston establishes neighborhood-level wastewater testing: Finally, one bit of wastewater surveillance news: the city of Boston is setting up 11 new sites to test wastewater, giving local public health officials more granular information about how COVID-19 is spreading in the region. The new initiative is a partnership with Biobot Analytics, the same wastewater testing company that has long worked with Boston, the CDC, and public health institutions across the country. (Boston was one of the first cities to start doing this testing.) Also, speaking of Biobot: the company just added a nice chart of coronavirus variants in U.S. wastewater over time to its dashboard.

    All featured sources
  • COVID source callout: CDC archives public datasets

    COVID source callout: CDC archives public datasets

    The CDC has archived a couple of major datasets providing COVID-19 cases and deaths by state and county.

    The CDC is now updating its COVID-19 cases and deaths data weekly, instead of daily, as I covered last week. This shift goes beyond the agency’s public dashboard: the CDC has also archived datasets with state- and county-level data providing COVID-19 cases and deaths, which were previously updated daily on data.cdc.gov.

    These datasets previously included the underlying numbers behind the CDC’s dashboard, allowing data-savvy Americans to produce their own analysis and visualizations. I learned about the archiving via a Twitter thread by Iowa data expert Sara Anne Willette, who uses the CDC’s data to update an independent dashboard tracking COVID-19 in her state.

    https://twitter.com/amethystarlight/status/1585760819320872961

    To replace these daily datasets, the CDC has posted a new dataset, “Weekly COVID-19 County Level of Community Transmission Historical Changes.” It appears to provide COVID-19 cases and test positivity rates by county, by week—but the data aren’t actually available yet. This dataset currently includes zero rows while the CDC resolves a “processing issue.”

    None of this is particularly surprising, considering that the CDC is clearly deprioritizing COVID-19 tracking and allocating its data analysis resources elsewhere. But it remains frustrating for those of us who still want to know what’s going on with COVID-19 in our communities.

    more source spotlights

  • Sources and updates, October 16

    • New paper outlines the CDC’s COVID-19 data failures: A new study by researchers at Johns Hopkins and Stanford, published this week in PLOS One, outlines missing and poor-quality epidemiological data that hindered the U.S.’s response to COVID-19. The researchers reviewed hundreds of reports by the CDC and other health agencies, finding that public data couldn’t answer key questions ranging from how long immune system protection lasts after an infection to which occupations and settings face the highest COVID-19 risk. (H/t Amy Maxmen.)
    • White House pushes for improvements to indoor air quality: This week, the White House hosted a summit event on indoor air quality while launching new resources to help building owners improve their air. The summit featured talks by government officials and leading experts, discussing why indoor air quality is important—especially in public facilities like schools—and providing recommendations. (For more details, see this Twitter thread by Jon Levy.) Biden officials are calling on building owners to participate in the “Clean Air in Buildings Challenge,” which includes bringing in more clean outdoor air and enhancing filtration. While these are important steps for health improvements, some experts would like to see the federal government go further by mandating clean air.
    • Voters do actually support safety measures, poll shows: New polling data from the left-wing think tank Data for Progress suggests that, contrary to popular narratives, a majority of Americans understand that COVID-19 still poses risks and support safety measures. For example, 74% of likely voters support the federal government requiring schools and workplaces to improve indoor air quality, and 70% of likely voters understand that certain groups (disabled people, seniors, etc.) remain at high risk from COVID-19.
    • New study demonstrates long-term risks of infection: Another notable new paper from this week: researchers in Scotland used health records and surveys to follow about 33,000 people who tested positive for COVID-19, compared to 63,000 who did not. The patients were all surveyed at six, 12, and 18 months post-infection; between the six- and 18-month surveys, about 6% of the cohort had not recovered while 42% reported only partial recovery. As one of the biggest studies to date that doesn’t rely solely on health records, this paper shows how Long COVID can be devastating long-term for patients.
    • Further research backs up testing out of isolation: And one more study I wanted to highlight this week: researchers at the University of California San Francisco examined how long people remained contagious after a coronavirus infection. The study included over 60,000 people who were tested at community sites in San Francisco. Five days after symptoms started, the researchers found, about 80% of patients infected during the Omicron BA.1 period were still positive on rapid tests—suggesting that, as other studies have found in the past, five days is an inadequate isolation period. Rapid testing out of isolation is the way to go.

    All featured sources

  • COVID source callout: CDC shifts to weekly updates

    This week, the CDC announced a big change to its COVID-19 data reporting: instead of updating case and death numbers daily, the figures will be updated weekly. The change comes into effect on October 20.

    Under the new schedule, data updates will be cut off on Wednesdays, though it’s unclear if the CDC will actually update its dashboard on Wednesdays or if this will happen on a day later in the week.

    According to the CDC’s data FAQ page, this change was made “to allow for additional reporting flexibility, reduce the reporting burden on states and jurisdictions, and maximize surveillance resources.” To me, this makes a lot of sense: as case data become increasingly less reliable (thanks to increased at-home testing, closing PCR sites, etc.), daily updates can be more misleading than they are valuable. Most states are not reporting daily data either.

    Also, much as it pains me to say this, the CDC’s COVID-19 dashboard is very likely not getting the views and attention that it received one or two years ago. If this change frees up agency data scientists to work on new tracking mechanisms that will be more useful, that seems like a fair trade-off to me. But it’s still a bummer to see the daily data go, especially at a time when we really need information to track a potential fall surge.

    Worth noting: the HHS Community Profile Reports are updating on a weekly cadence now as well.

    more source spotlights
  • Potential data fragmentation when the federal COVID-19 public health emergency ends

    Potential data fragmentation when the federal COVID-19 public health emergency ends

    About half of U.S. states have D or F grades on their breakthrough case reporting, according to the Pandemic Prevention Institute and Pandemic Tracking Collective. Other metrics could be heading in this direction next year.

    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.

    A reader recently asked me about the federal government’s ability to compile and report COVID-19 data, using our new anonymous Google form. They asked: “Will the CDC at some point stop reporting COVID data even though it may still be circulating, or is it a required, reportable disease?”

    It’s difficult to predict what the CDC will do, as we’ve seen in the agency’s many twists and turns throughout the pandemic. That said, my best guess here is that the CDC will always provide COVID-19 data in some form; but the agency could be severely limited in data collection and reporting based on the disease’s federal status.

    The CDC’s authority

    One crucial thing to understand here is that the CDC does not actually have much power over state and local public health departments. It can issue guidance, request data, distribute funding, and so forth, but it isn’t able to require data collection in many circumstances.

    Here’s Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at Harvard’s public health school and interim director of science at the CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, explaining this dynamic. This quote is from an interview that I conducted back in May for my FiveThirtyEight story on the new center:

    Outside of a public health emergency, CDC has no authority to require states to share data. And even in an emergency, for example, if you look on the COVID Data Tracker, there are systems that have half the states or some of the states. That’s because those were the ones that were willing to share. And that is a very big handicap of doing good modeling and good tracking… Everything you’re trying to measure, for any decision, is better if you measure it in all the states.

    Consider breakthrough cases as one example. According to the Pandemic Prevention Institute’s scorecard for breakthrough data reporting, about half of U.S. states have D or F grades, meaning that they are reporting zero or very limited data on post-vaccination COVID-19 cases. The number of states with failing grades has increased in recent months, as states reduce their COVID-19 data resources. As a result, federal agencies have an incomplete picture of vaccine effectiveness.

    Wastewater data is another example. While the CDC is able to compile data from all state and local public health departments with their own wastewater surveillance systems—and can pay Biobot to expand the surveillance network—the agency has no ability to actually require states to track COVID-19 through sewage. This lack of authority contributes to the CDC’s wastewater map still showing many empty spaces in states like Alabama and North Dakota.

    The COVID-19 public health emergency

    According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), a federal public health emergency gives the HHS and CDC new funding for health measures and the authority to coordinate between states, among other expanded powers.

    During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal emergency was specifically used to require data collection from state health departments and individual hospitals, POLITICO reported in May. According to POLITICO, the required data includes sources that have become key to our country’s ability to track the pandemic, such as:

    • PCR test results from state and local health departments;
    • Hospital capacity information from individual healthcare facilities;
    • COVID-19 patients admitted to hospitals;
    • COVID-19 cases, deaths, and vaccination status in nursing homes.

    The federal COVID-19 public health emergency is formally controlled by HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. Becerra most recently renewed the emergency in July, with an expiration date in October. Health experts anticipate that it will be renewed again in October, because HHS has promised to give states a 60-day warning before the emergency expires and there’s been no warning for this fall. That leaves us with a new potential expiration date in January 2023.

    CDC officials are seeking to permanently expand the agency’s authority to include this data collection—with a particular priority on hospitalization data. But that hasn’t happened yet, to the best of my knowledge. So, what might happen to our data when the federal emergency ends?

    Most likely, metrics that the CDC currently requires from states will become voluntary. As we see right now with breakthrough cases and wastewater data, some states will probably continue reporting while others will not. Our federal data will become much more piecemeal, a patchwork of reporting for important sources such as hospitalizations and lab test results.

    It’s important to note here that many states have already ended their own public health emergencies, following a trend that I covered back in February. Many of these states are now devoting fewer resources to free tests, contact tracing, case investigations, public data dashboards, and other data-related efforts than they were in prior phases of the pandemic. New York was the latest state to make such a declaration, with Governor Kathy Hochul letting her emergency powers expire last week.

    How the flu gets tracked

    COVID-minimizing officials and pundits love to compare “endemic” COVID-19 to the flu. This isn’t a great comparison for many reasons, but I do think it’s helpful to look at how flu is currently tracked in the U.S. in order to get a sense of how COVID-19 may be tracked in the future.

    The U.S. does not count every flu case; that kind of precise tracking on a large scale was actually a new innovation for COVID-19. Instead, the CDC relies on surveillance networks that estimate national flu cases based on targeted tracking.

    There are about 400 labs nationwide (including public health labs in all 50 states) participating in flu surveillance via the World Health Organization’s global program, processing flu tests and sequencing cases to track viral variants. Meanwhile, about 3,000 outpatient healthcare providers in the U.S. Outpatient Influenza-like Illness Surveillance Network provide the CDC with flu-related electronic health records. You can read more about both surveillance programs here.

    Sample CDC flu reporting from spring 2020. The agency provides estimates of flu activity rather than precise case numbers.

    The CDC reports data from these surveillance programs on a dashboard called FluView. As you can see, the CDC provides estimates about flu activity by state and by different demographic groups, but the data may not be very granular (eg. no estimates by county or metro area) and are provided with significant time delays.

    Other diseases are tracked similarly. For example, the CDC will track new outbreaks of foodborne illnesses like E. coli when they arise but does not attempt to log every infection. When researchers seek to understand the burden of different diseases, they often use hospital or insurance records rather than government data.

    One metric that I’d expect to remain unchanged when the COVID-19 emergency ends is deaths: the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) comprehensively tracks all deaths through its death certificate system. But even provisional data from NCHS are reported with a delay of several weeks, with complete data unavailable for at least a year.

    Epidemiologists I’ve interviewed say that we should be inspired by COVID-19 to improve surveillance for other diseases, rather than allowing COVID-19 to fall into the flu model. Wastewater data could help with this; a lot of wastewater researchers (including those at Biobot) are already working on tracking flu and other diseases. But to truly improve surveillance, we need more sustained investment in public health at all levels—and more data collection authority for the CDC and HHS.

    More federal data

  • Data considerations for the new Omicron-specific booster shots

    Data considerations for the new Omicron-specific booster shots

    We don’t have data yet on the BA.4/BA.5 vaccines in humans, but studies in mice have been promising. Screenshot from Moderna slides presented to CDC ACIP this week.

    This week, the FDA and CDC authorized new booster shots from both Pfizer and Moderna that are tweaked to specifically target Omicron BA.4 and BA.5. The vaccines will start becoming available at pharmacies and doctors’ offices across the country in the coming days.

    Much of the media coverage of these new boosters has focused on the fact that they’re the first COVID-19 vaccines derived from a newer variant, as opposed to the original Wuhan strain. BA.5 and BA.4.6, a sublineage of BA.4, are causing almost all COVID-19 cases in the country right now; some experts hope that a booster campaign targeted to these versions of the coronavirus will lead to actual decreases in transmission, not just severe disease.

    While this is an important milestone, I’d like to focus on a couple of reasons these shots are notable from a data perspective. First, the Omicron boosters are the first COVID-19 vaccines authorized in the U.S. without data from human trials. During vaccine development, companies typically start with lab studies, then test the vaccine in animal models, then in humans. Because the BA.4/BA.5 shots were designed so recently, Pfizer and Moderna haven’t had time to test them in humans yet.

    From a safety and efficacy perspective, this lack of data isn’t a huge concern because the new vaccines are very close to BA.1 versions that have been tested in humans. As Katelyn Jetelina explained in a Your Local Epidemiologist post about the new vaccines:

    Literally the difference of a few amino acids—like a few letter edits on a Word document. We aren’t changing the number of words in the paper (like dosage of RNA), or the content of the paper, or the platform (like Word to Excel). Because of the minimal change, we are confident that BA.1 bivalent safety data will accurately reflect BA.5 safety.

    Another important piece of context here is that flu vaccines—which are updated each year to reflect currently circulating versions of the virus—are typically not tested in humans before they’re rolled out in annual flu campaigns. So, the new COVID-19 shots are following an existing process; future vaccine adjustments for new variants going forward will likely happen in a similar way.

    Second, the Omicron boosters are the first COVID-19 vaccines authorized in the U.S. before they’ve been tested in other countries. For previous booster campaigns, effectiveness data from countries with better-organized health systems that started using new rounds of shots before we did (such as the U.K. and Israel) have been key for U.S. regulators making authorization decisions. 

    But the BA.4/BA.5 boosters haven’t been rolled out anywhere else yet. Several other countries (the E.U., the U.K., Canada, Switzerland, Australia) have authorized Omicron BA.1 boosters—those that have gone through more clinical testing. The U.S. is the first to try the BA.4/BA.5 option. It will be interesting to see whether there are significant differences in how these countries’ fall booster campaigns mitigate potential surges.

    And third, these boosters are likely to be the last COVID-19 vaccines authorized while they’re still covered by federal funding. Recent announcements from officials like Ashish Jha have suggested that, in 2023, the government will stop buying vaccine supplies in large quantities to distribute for free. Instead, COVID-19 vaccines will start to be privately-purchased, health insurance-mediated products like other vaccines.

    While some local governments and large health institutions will likely still organize free vaccine distributions for future rounds of shots, the lack of federal supplies will be a major shift. It will make COVID-19 vaccination harder to access, especially among people without health insurance—likely leading to even lower uptake. We need to make this last free booster campaign count.

    Going forward, here are a few questions I’ll be tracking as these boosters get rolled out:

    • How will public health agencies track the effectiveness of these new vaccines? We’ll want to see how the BA.4/BA.5 shots compare to prior boosters at preventing infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. Data on breakthrough cases is already pretty limited in the U.S., so we may have to rely on specific local health departments and health systems that have better infrastructure for this.
    • What additional boosters might be needed in the future? As we examine how well these Omicron-specific boosters work, we will need to keep track of the potential need for more shots. Will immunocompromised people or older adults need second rounds of Omicron shots, for example?
    • What new variants will come on the scene? Also impacting the potential need for further vaccine shots: the arrival of new variants, either continued Omicron mutations or something else entirely. Wastewater surveillance may be particularly helpful for variant tracking as PCR testing continues to be less available.
    • How will the privatization of vaccines impact tracking? If COVID-19 vaccines are no longer purchased and distributed by the federal government after 2022, will this impact the CDC’s ability to track vaccinations? We’re already seeing more vaccine distribution at private pharmacies and doctors’ offices as opposed to publicly-run clinics; I wonder how this trend may continue.

    For more information on the new boosters, check out: 

    More vaccine coverage

  • CDC stops sharing cruise ship COVID-19 data

    CDC stops sharing cruise ship COVID-19 data

    The CDC is no longer publishing data about COVID-19 outbreaks on cruise ships.

    Last week, 93 out of 94 cruise ships reporting COVID-19 data to the CDC had active outbreaks, meeting the agency’s threshold of cases in at least 0.3% of passengers and crew.

    Then, this past Monday, the CDC abruptly stopped reporting these data. A page that previously displayed COVID-19 status for all cruise ships monitored by the agency was replaced with a note:

    As of July 18, 2022, CDC’s COVID-19 Program for Cruise Ships is no longer in effect. CDC will continue to publish guidance to help cruise ships continue to provide a safer and healthier environment for passengers, crew and communities going forward.

    This seems a bit suspicious, considering that the U.S. (including cruise ships) is in the middle of a COVID-19 surge driven by the highly transmissible Omicron BA.5 variant. In a statement to the Washington Post, CDC spokesperson Kristen Nordlund said: “CDC has determined that the cruise industry has access to the necessary tools… to prevent and mitigate COVID-19 on board.”

    But there have been no substantial changes to COVID-19 safety measures on cruise ships that might merit this change, according to the Post; in fact, cruises have only become more lenient since the beginning of 2022. Some cruise lines have stopped requiring tests before passengers board a ship.

    Cruise lines will continue to report COVID-19 data to the CDC, but the process is voluntary. And without public data from cruise ships, passengers trying to decide whether they should proceed with a trip will need to call a cruise line directly to ask about potential outbreaks.

    I’ve heard some commentators say that the end of the mask mandate on airplanes in April was a turning point in U.S. attitudes towards the pandemic. The end of cruise ship data feels like another potential turning point, demonstrating how the CDC is slowly pulling resources out of its COVID-19 response—even as the country faces a dangerous surge.

    more federal data

  • COVID source callout: CDC takes weekends off

    If you went to pretty much any page on the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker this week, you might have noticed a new alert at the top of the page:

    Beginning July 4, 2022, COVID Data Tracker will discontinue daily data refreshes 7 days per week, and will instead refresh data Monday through Friday.

    In other words, the CDC is following in the footsteps of many state and local health departments across the country in taking weekends off from COVID-19 updates. This is pretty unsurprising, considering how many long weekends the agency’s COVID-19 tracking team has taken recently (see: last week’s callout post).

    Indeed, only five states are still updating their COVID-19 dashboards daily, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. But the CDC’s move is still disappointing, as it represents yet another step away from this national public health agency fulfilling its responsibilities to inform Americans about the pandemic.

    more source spotlights

  • COVID source callout: CDC Weekly Review

    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.

    This week, for example, there has been no Weekly Review update, even though the CDC’s long weekend didn’t start until Saturday. The same thing happened over Juneteenth weekend: no report that Friday, either.

    I understand, of course, that the CDC data scientists who work on these updates deserve time off like everyone else. But these data summaries remain important for the millions of Americans relying on the CDC to track the pandemic. When the schedule of a “weekly” report becomes less regular, it demonstrates how the agency has deprioritized COVID-19.