Where to find wastewater data for your community

November 20, 2022.Reading time 6 minutes.

As we head into the holidays with limited COVID-19 testing and undercounted case numbers, wastewater surveillance is the best way to evaluate how much the virus is spreading in your region. And it’s now available in more places than ever, thanks to the many research groups and public health agencies setting up sewage testing.

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The U.S.’s flu and RSV surveillance is insufficient for tracking this fall’s outbreaks

October 30, 2022.Reading time 11 minutes.

I recently received a question from a reader, asking how to follow both COVID-19 and the flu in the county where she lives. For COVID-19, county-level data sources aren’t too hard to find; for the flu, this is much harder.

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Interpreting COVID-19 data as the CDC goes weekly and a fall surge approaches

October 23, 2022.Reading time 10 minutes.

As of this Thursday, the CDC is updating COVID-19 case and death data every week instead of every day. Here are some thoughts on interpreting COVID-19 data in the wake of this change, citing an article I recently wrote for The Atlantic.

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12 statistics showing the pandemic isn’t over

September 25, 2022.Reading time 12 minutes.

Last Sunday, 60 Minutes aired an interview with President Joe Biden in which he declared the pandemic is “over,” noting that everyone at the Detroit Auto Show “seems to be in pretty good shape.” But there are millions of Americans Biden wasn’t seeing: people who aren’t in good shape.

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

September 18, 2022.Reading time 14 minutes.

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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Tips for interpreting COVID-19 data while the CDD goes on hiatus

July 31, 2022.Reading time 13 minutes.

The COVID-19 Data Dispatch is going on hiatus for the month of August 2022. Here are some tips for keeping track of COVID-19 numbers while we’re on this break, and a bit of context about why we’re taking four weeks off.

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CDC stops sharing cruise ship COVID-19 data

July 24, 2022.Reading time 3 minutes.

As of last Monday, the CDC is no longer reporting data about COVID-19 outbreaks on cruise ships. This change comes in the middle of a massive surge (including on cruise ships!).

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Nine areas of data we need to manage the pandemic

June 26, 2022.Reading time 11 minutes.

Will we ever get control of this pandemic? We can, but better data will go a long way in helping us get there. Here are nine areas where I’d like to see improvement.

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Unpacking U.S. data gaps and lack of public health action with Jason Salemi

June 12, 2022.Reading time 36 minutes.

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.

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We need more data on who’s getting Paxlovid

May 29, 2022.Reading time 11 minutes.

Last week, I shared a new page from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), reporting statistics on COVID-19 therapeutic distribution in the U.S. The new dataset is a helpful step, but it falls far short of the information we actually need to examine who has access to COVID-19 treatments (particularly Paxlovid) and address potential health equity issues.

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