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.
Read MoreSources and updates for the week of May 29 include potential changes to hospitalization data reporting, new research on Omicron subvariants, and more.
Read MoreSources 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.
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This week, I had a big retrospective story published at FiveThirtyEight: I looked back at the major metrics that the U.S. has used to track COVID-19 over the past two years—and how our country’s fractured public health system hindered our use of each one.
Read MoreSources and updates for the week of March 20 include a revamped tracker for deaths by race and ethnicity, the CDC possibly taking back hospital data reporting, global excess deaths, and more.
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Last summer and fall, Idaho was completely overrun by the Delta variant. State leaders implemented crisis standards of care, a practice allowing hospitals to conserve their limited resources when they are becoming overwhelmed. All hospitals in Idaho were in crisis standards for weeks, with the northern Panhandle region remaining in this crisis mode for over 100 days.
Read MoreAdditional news items for the week of February 27 include the CDC withholding data, BA.2 updates, and rapid testing out of isolation.
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This past Friday, the CDC announced a major shift to its guidance for determining COVID-19 safety measures based on county-level community metrics. The new guidance is intended to replace COVID-19 thresholds that the agency developed last summer, during the Delta wave; here, the CDC is promoting a shift from using cases and test positivity for local decision-making to using metrics tied directly to the healthcare system.
Read MoreSources and updates for the week of February 13 include a potential change to federal hospitalization data and long-term heart health after COVID-19.
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While BA.2 has dominated the news cycle this week, we’re still learning more about—and seeing policy shifts due to—the original Omicron strain, BA.1. Here are a few major updates, including hospital metrics, Omicron-specific vaccines, and more.
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