- New Long COVID review from PLRC and Scripps: Leading Long COVID researchers from the Patient-Led Research Collaborative and the Scripps Research Translational Institute collaborated on a review paper published this week in Nature, summarizing major findings from the literature so far. The paper includes summaries of major symptoms (ranging from cardiac damage to cognitive impairment), correlations between Long COVID and other chronic diseases (ME/CFS, POTS, etc.), treatment options for specific symptoms and/or biological mechanisms, and much more. I haven’t had a chance to read the paper in full yet, but I anticipate that it will be a valuable resource for future research.
- Vaccines still reduce risk of transmission: Another recent paper in Nature reports on the impact of vaccination among inmates in the California state prison system. Researchers at the University of California San Francisco analyzed COVID-19 surveillance data from 35 prisons during the early months of Omicron (December 2021 to May 2022). They found patients infected with Omicron after vaccination and/or a prior infection had lower risks of transmitting the virus to others. The study suggests that vaccination (and prior infection) is still helpful in reducing COVID-19 spread in addition to reducing severe symptoms, even at this point in the pandemic. (H/t Your Local Epidemiologist.)
- Coronavirus found in airplane wastewater on international flights: In a small study, researchers at the National Public Health Laboratory of Malaysia tested wastewater samples from 29 flights that arrived at Kuala Lumpur from outside the country. The researchers found that SARS-CoV-2 was present on 28 of the 29 flights—and testing for the remaining flight wasn’t yet complete, according to a local news outlet that covered the study. While this is a relatively small sample, the results suggest that COVID-19 is very prevalent in travel settings. The study also serves as a helpful example for future plane wastewater testing.
- New report highlights nursing home issues: A recent report from the American Health Care Association shares results from a survey of 524 nursing homes across the U.S. The findings show challenges with staffing and economic challenges; for example, 84% of the nursing homes surveyed reported “moderate to high levels of staffing shortages,” and 67% of the homes surveyed reported concerns that they may need to close their facilities due to staffing problems. (H/t POLITICO Pulse.)
- End of Ebola outbreak in Uganda: Finally, a bit of (non-COVID-19) good news: this week, health officials in Uganda declared the end of the country’s recent Ebola outbreak. The outbreak started in September 2022, and included a total of 164 cases and 55 deaths. The final patient of this outbreak was released from healthcare on November 30, according to the World Health Organization; Uganda successfully curbed the disease’s spread despite a lack of vaccines and treatments approved against the strain of Ebola that was spreading.
Tag: long-term care data
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Sources and updates, January 15
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12 statistics showing the pandemic isn’t over
Long COVID and ME/CFS patients protest in front of the White House, telling Biden that the pandemic is not over and demanding action on their conditions. Image courtesy of ME Action. Last Sunday, 60 Minutes aired an interview with President Joe Biden in which he declared the pandemic is “over.”
“The pandemic is over,” Biden said, while walking through the Detroit Auto Show with 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley. “We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over. If you notice, nobody’s wearing masks, everybody seems to be in pretty good shape.”
Most of the debate and dissection of this interview has focused on Biden’s statement that the “pandemic is over.” Is it, actually? (Epidemiologists say no.) Does he have the authority to declare it over? (No, that’s a job for the WHO.) Was his statement just reflecting what most Americans are already thinking? (Depends on who you call “most Americans.”)
See, I think the key part of Biden’s quote here actually comes at the end: “everybody seems to be in pretty good shape.” Seems to be is doing a lot of work here. In the interview, Biden is strolling through the auto show, through groups of unmasked people looking at car exhibits.
He is not actually talking to these bystanders, asking them whether they’ve lost loved ones to COVID-19, lost work during the pandemic, or faced any lingering symptoms after catching the virus themselves. Biden also isn’t considering the people who were excluded from this auto show: the Americans who were left disabled with Long COVID, and those still taking safety precautions due to other health conditions.
Images of the auto show, like those of packed indoor restaurants or maskless stadiums, seem to suggest that, yeah, Americans no longer care about COVID-19. But there are plenty of other images that don’t make it into high-profile media settings like Biden’s interview.
Today, I invite you to consider a few of the images that Biden isn’t seeing. Here are 12 statistics showing how the COVID-19 pandemic continues to have a massive impact on Americans:
- At least 400 Americans are dying with COVID-19 every day, about 47,000 deaths total between June and September 2022. Daily death data tend to be underestimates, because it can take weeks to process death certificates (and numbers are often retroactively edited up). But we can still see that hundreds of people are dying each day. As Sarah Zhang points out in The Atlantic, this is several times the threshold experts set in early 2021 for calling the pandemic at an end.
- About 25,000 people are currently hospitalized with COVID-19 cases. Yes, many of the people included in this statistic probably entered the hospital for another reason, then tested positive as part of routine screening. But incidental coronavirus infections still put pressure on the hospitals caring for these patients, and can intersect with a wide variety of other health conditions, potentially causing long-term issues for patients.
- About 7.6% of adults are currently experiencing some form of Long COVID, as of early August. This estimate, which I pulled from the Census and CDC’s Household Pulse Survey, rises for certain demographics: almost 10% of women, 11% of transgender adults, 11% of adults with less than a high school diploma, and 15% of adults with a disability are currently experiencing Long COVID.
- Hundreds of Long COVID and ME/CFS patients protested at the White House and online on Monday. Biden’s statement coincidentally landed the night before a planned protest, in which patient-advocates called for the president to declare a national emergency around Long COVID and ME/CFS. The protest was covered in the New York Times, MedPage Today, the BMJ, and other outlets.
- 19 patients, patient-advocates, and experts testified at a New York City Council hearing about Long COVID and gender on Thursday. Long COVID patients and those with related conditions (like ME/CFS and HIV) talked about dismissals from doctors and inability to return to their pre-COVID lives. They called for more comprehensive medical care and other forms of financial and social support for patients. I covered the hearing for Gothamist/WNYC.
- About 2.5 million adults were recently out of work due to a COVID-19 case, either because they were sick themselves or were caring for a sick person. Another 1.6 million adults were out of work due to concern about getting or spreading COVID-19. These statistics come from the most recent iteration of the Household Pulse Survey, conducted from July 27 to August 8, 2022.
- About 2.2 million adults were recently laid off or furloughed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Another one million had their employers go out of business due to the pandemic, and 900,000 had their employers close temporarily due to COVID-19. These data are from the same Household Pulse Survey.
- Over 50 million adults experienced symptoms of anxiety for at least half the days in the last two weeks, at the time of the most recent Household Pulse Survey. Almost 40 million adults experienced symptoms of depression for at least half the days in the same two-week period.
- Over 80% of Americans still support the federal government providing free COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, and tests to anyone who needs them, according to an Axios-Ipsos poll conducted in early September. A past iteration of that poll, from March 2022, found that 74% of Americans reported they were “likely to wear a mask outside the home if COVID-19 cases surge again in their area.”
- About 3% of Americans, or around 12 million people, are immunocompromised and still have reason to take intense COVID-19 precautions. Immunocompromised people have been eligible for extra vaccine doses, but are still more vulnerable to both severe COVID-19 symptoms and Long COVID.
- Over one million seniors live in nursing homes, and almost one million more live in assisted living and other forms of long-term care facilities. Seniors in long-term care have represented a hugely disproportionate share of deaths from COVID-19, and the CDC just made its mask recommendations for these facilities much more lenient—putting many vulnerable adults at risk.
- 2.5 billion people worldwide still haven’t been vaccinated, according to estimates from Our World in Data. Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker estimates that, at the current pace of first doses administered, it will take another 10 months for just 75% of the global population to have received at least one COVID-19 shot. As long as COVID-19 continues to spread anywhere in the world, new variants can be a threat everywhere.
More on Long COVID
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Sources and updates, May 1
- Nursing Home Inspect (ProPublica): ProPublica recently published a major investigation into medical exemptions to COVID-19 vaccines among nursing home workers, finding that high numbers of workers are claiming these exemptions even though the actual, medical reasons causing someone to be ineligible for vaccination are fairly limiting. Along with the investigation, the newsroom added staff COVID-19 vaccination data to its Nursing Home Inspect database, which allows users to compare nursing homes based on negative inspection reports and other deficiencies.
- Neighborhood Atlas: One source I learned about at the health journalists’ conference this weekend is the Neighborhood Atlas tool from researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. The atlas maps out metrics that put neighborhoods—i.e. Census block groups, a geographical level much more granular than counties—at a health disadvantage, including income, education, employment, and housing.
- Access to hospital services for minority groups: Another source from the AHCJ conference: this February 2022 paper and corresponding dataset, measuring how far different minority communities across the country have to go to access hospital services. Over half of rural Native American communities are more than 30 miles from the closest intensive care unit, said Dr. Mary-Katherine McNatt in a talk introducing this source.
- KFF’s State Health Facts: Also at the conference, Juliette Cubanski from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) gave a presentation on the organization’s data tools and resources for journalists, focusing on Medicare data. One broadly useful KFF tool is the State Health Facts dashboard, which enables journalists and researchers to search through over 800 health indicators at the state level. These indicators are frequently updated with the most recent data.
- Nursing home staffing reports: COVID-19 revealed how unprepared America’s nursing homes were for a health crisis. In a panel discussing this issue, Richard Mollot from the Long Term Care Community Coalition (a nonprofit that advocates for better long-term care) shared some data from his organization, highlighting drops in staffing during the pandemic that have not yet been recovered.
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Sources and updates, April 24
- COVID-19 and public transportation: This week’s biggest COVID-19 news story was, without a doubt, a Florida judge striking down the U.S.’s mask mandate for public transportation (including airplanes, trains, buses, and terminals for all these transit methods). The federal justice department is appealing the decision, as the CDC has determined that masks are still necessary in these settings—at least, while the BA.2 surge is at large. Two good articles to read on this topic: Your Local Epidemiologist’s explanation of coronavirus transmission risk on planes, and Slate’s rundown of what this judge’s ruling could mean for future infectious disease outbreaks.
- Hospitalizations of young children during Omicron: A major study released in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) this week describes hospitalization rates among children ages five to 11, focusing on the Omicron wave in December through February. Findings include: about nine in ten of the children hospitalized during this period were unvaccinated, and hospitalization rates were twice in high in unvaccinated children compared to vaccinated children, demonstrating the importance of vaccination in the five to 11 age group.
- COVID-19 death rates by race and ethnicity: Another notable study published in MMWR this week: CDC researchers used provisional mortality data (based on death certificates) to study COVID-19 death rates among different racial and ethnic groups, comparing 2020 and 2021. Death rates for Hispanic, Black, and Native Americans were closer to the rates for white Americans in 2021 than they had been in 2020, the report found; this is likely tied to lower vaccination rates and, consequently, higher death rates in conservative and rural areas. For any reporters seeking to investigate these patterns in their regions, the Documenting COVID-19 project’s CDC mortality data repository includes county-level death data from the same source as this MMWR report.
- New CMS data on hospital and nursing home ownership: Nursing homes and other long-term care facilities have been under increased scrutiny during the pandemic, as COVID-19 revealed major flaws in facilities’ ability to care for vulnerable seniors, A series of new datasets from the Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) aims to enable more scrutiny: the datasets include changes of ownership for skilled nursing facilities and for hospitals. CMS plans to update these datasets on a quarterly basis, according to a press release about the new data.
- New funding for patient-led Long COVID research: The Patient-Led Research Collaborative (PLRC), a group of Long COVID patients that have produced leading research on their condition, announced this week that they’ve received $3 million in funding. This funding comes from Balvi, a fund for high-impact COVID-19 projects established by Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin. PLRC announced that $2 million will go to start a pool of Long COVID research grants—to be awarded directly by patients—while the remaining $1 million will fund a series of PLRC-led studies. I look forward to reporting on the results of this research! (Also, related: this week, I updated the source list of Long COVID patients and experts willing to talk to reporters, which I compiled with Fiona Lowenstein.)
- FDA authorizes breathalyzer for COVID-19: The latest new COVID-19 test is a breathalyzer: this machine, developed by Texas-based diagnostics company InspectIR, analyzes chemicals in a person’s breath to quickly detect compounds signifying a coronavirus infection. This test can deliver results in just three minutes—even faster than an antigen test—but it needs to be performed in a medical setting; InspectIR is working on a version that could be hand-held, like breathalyzers for alcohol. Impressive as the technology is, this data reporter is asking: how will those test results get reported to public health agencies?
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Featured sources, December 19
- COVID-19 preventable mortality and leading cause of death ranking: The Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker has recently updated its analysis of preventable deaths from COVID-19 and the disease’s position among top causes of death in the U.S. In November 2021, COVID-19 was the #3 cause of death after heart disease and cancer. And, between June and November, more than 160,000 COVID-19 deaths could have been prevented with vaccinations.
- AARP analysis of nursing home data: AARP researchers have analyzed and visualized data showing staff shortages in nursing homes, along with vaccination rates, PPE availability, and other related figures. According to AARP’s analysis, almost one-third of the 15,000 nursing homes in the U.S. “recently reported a shortage of nurses or aides,” as of mid-November. (H/t Al Tompkins’ COVID-19 newsletter.)
- News workers laid off and outlets closed during the pandemic: At least 6,154 workers at news organizations were laid off between March 2020 and August 2021, according to a new report from Columbia Journalism Review. And at least 100 organizations closed during this time, though 14 have since resumed operations to some extent. The report includes detailed data on these layoffs and organization closures.
- Recommendations to transform public health data in the U.S.: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a health philanthropy organization, has convened a commission of experts to reimagine how public health data are collected, shared, and used in the U.S. The commission put together this report, which includes recommendations ranging from data literacy to racial equity. While the report doesn’t include much data, per se, I wanted to include it in this week’s issue as a resource—and a source for potential story ideas.
- Science Literacy Resource Guide: The Science Literacy Foundation, a new nonprofit in the scicomm space, had compiled this database of science literacy-related resources. It includes resources specific to journalism, communication, education, policy, and research; the guide isn’t COVID-specific, but has a lot of utility for continued pandemic coverage. (Disclaimer: I’ve previously worked on a project for the Science Literacy Foundation, but was not involved with this guide.)
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Featured sources, September 12
- K-12 Education Polls: Staff at EdChoice, a nonprofit education research organization, are keeping track of polling on school reopening and various related safety strategies, such as vaccine and mask requirements. This spreadsheet includes over 300 polls going back to March 2020.
- The Overlooked, K-12 report: Here’s another K-12 reopening source: a new report from the education-focused Walton Family Foundation characterizing families who felt dissatisfied by their education choices in fall 2020. The report includes estimates of students who changed schools, failed to enroll in formal schooling, or otherwise “are frustrated with their current schooling option and lack access to their preferred alternative(s).”
- Case and death underreporting in nursing homes: In a new paper published this week, researchers from Harvard University estimated that over 68,000 COVID-19 cases and over 16,000 deaths among U.S. nursing home residents have gone unreported in federal data. The researchers made their facility-level underreporting estimates available on GitHub, including nursing homes in 20 states that were utilized for the analysis.
- Case acceleration by state: In July, STAT News data project manager J. Emory Parker introduced a new metric for visualizing the pandemic: case acceleration, or how fast cases are increasing (or decreasing). Now, you can view state-by-state case acceleration numbers in real-time on STAT’s website. The dashboard is updated daily with data from the CDC, Johns Hopkins, and Our World in Data.
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Featured sources, June 27
- Vaccine hesitancy by ZIP code: A new data visualization tool from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation provides details on which parts of the U.S. would most benefit from vaccination campaigns. The underlying data come from a survey run by the Delphi Research Group at Carnegie Mellon, conducted between June 4 and June 10.
- OIG report on nursing homes: The HHS Office of Inspector General published a new report this week evaluating COVID-19 outbreaks in nursing homes. The report found that two in five Medicare beneficiaries living in nursing homes were diagnosed with COVID-19 (confirmed or probable cases) in 2020, and almost 1,000 more seniors died per day in April 2020 compared to April 2019.
- The State of the Nation’s Housing, 2021: This comprehensive report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard provides data on home prices, rents, and other related metrics for the past year. The report shows that many households—especially those who are Black and Hispanic—are still behind on housing payments, and could benefit from continued assistance (such as the CDC eviction moratorium extended this week).
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Featured sources, Sept. 6
- Colors of COVID: This Canadian project relies on public surveys to collect data on how COVID-19 is impacting marginalized communities in the country. The project plans to release quarterly reports with these survey results.
- America’s Health Rankings’ Senior Report: America’s Health Rankings has conducted annual reviews of health metrics in every U.S. state since 1990. The organization’s most recent Senior Report is over 100 pages of data on older Americans, including rankings of the healthiest states for seniors.
- The Long-Term Care COVID Tracker: I wrote in my August 16 newsletter that the COVID Tracking Project had released a snapshot of a new dataset compiling cases and deaths in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and other long-term care facilities. As of this week, the full dataset is out, including historical data going back to May 21 and extensive notes on how each state is reporting this crucial information. Read more about it here.
- NIOSH-Approved N-95 Respirators: This CDC list includes thousands of surgical N-95 respirators approved by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH); it’s intended as a source for healthcare workers. As a recent article in Salon points out, the list includes over 600 valved models, despite recent guidances instructing the public to avoid valved masks.
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New reporting requirements for nursing homes, hospitals, labs
This week’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) update is a little indirect, in that it’s actually a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) update.
Last Tuesday, CMS announced that nursing homes are required to test their staff and offer to test their residents when a COVID-19 outbreak occurs. Facilities that don’t test adequately can be fined. These new requirements follow the recent large-scale distribution of antigen tests to nursing homes, a move I’ve discussed in previous issues. It is still unclear, however, how exactly the results of all this testing will be reported. While the CMS COVID-19 dataset includes some new fields on testing this week, these are primarily yes/no fields, such as “Tested Asymptomatic Staff and/or Personnel Facility-Wide After a New Case.” Actual test counts are not yet reported.
The new CMS directive is also notable in that it includes new reporting directives for hospitals and COVID-19 labs. Hospitals were already required to report their COVID-19 patients, PPE needs, and other metrics to HHS, but now they are extra required to report them:
In March, Vice President Mike Pence sent a letter to all hospitals requesting that they provide the results of COVID-19 tests performed in their in-house laboratories to help better understand and track disease patterns. CMS’ new rules require such reporting of test results in order to ensure a more complete picture in the nationwide surveillance of COVID-19, as well as a more efficient allocation of PPE and other vital supplies. Hospitals will face possible termination of Medicare and Medicaid payment if unable to correct reporting deficiencies.
Outside laboratories conducting COVID-19 tests can similarly face monetary penalties if they fail to report to HHS: CMS will impose a fine of $1,000 a day for the first day a lab fails to report and $500 for each subsequent day. I and other folks at the COVID Tracking Project will be watching carefully to see how this directive impacts the completeness and accuracy of HHS data.
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Featured sources, Aug. 16
- Lost on the frontline: This week, Kaiser Health News and The Guardian released an interactive database honoring American healthcare workers who have died during the COVID-19 pandemic. 167 workers are included in the database so far, and hundreds more are under investigation. Reading the names and stories of these workers is a small way to remember those we have lost.
- The Long-Term Care COVID Tracker, by the COVID Tracking Project: Residents of nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and other long-term care facilities account for 43% of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. A new dataset from the COVID Tracking Project compiles these sobering numbers from state public health departments. You can currently explore a snapshot of the data as of August 6; the full dataset will be released this coming week.
- Household Pulse Survey by the U.S. Census: From the end of April through the end of July, the U.S. Census ran a survey program to collect data on how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the lives of American residents. The survey results include questions on education, employment, food security, health, and housing. I looked at the survey’s final release for a Stacker story; you can see a few statistics and charts from that story here:
COVID-19 Data Dispatch 