- Johns Hopkins dashboard creator wins public service award: Lauren Gardner, an engineering professor at Johns Hopkins University, was recently awarded the 2022 Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award (a major prize in biomedical research) in recognition of her work on JHU’s global COVID-19 dashboard. This dashboard was one of the world’s first and most popular sources for tracking how the pandemic spread. Unlike many other projects, it has continued fairly consistently since early 2020, and continues to be a great resource for national and international data. Congratulations to Gardner and the other folks at JHU!
- CDC releases updated chronic disease and risk factor data: This week, the CDC published a new iteration of its Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a major data source providing information on chronic conditions, health behaviors, access to healthcare, and more. The surveillance system uses surveys of over 400,000 American adults, conducted annually in all 50 states and several territories. While these aren’t COVID-specific data, the datasets can be a really helpful source for examining populations more vulnerable to COVID-19 in different parts of the country.
- Increased respiratory illnesses in children: Another CDC update: researchers from the agency published a new study in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report reporting increased cases of respiratory illness in kids this past summer. Strains of rhinovirus and enterovirus that haven’t circulated much in the last two years are back in 2022 and could cause problems this fall—especially as schools continue to operate in-person with relatively few public health measures—the CDC report suggests. For more context, see this recent newsletter by Katelyn Jetelina and Caitlin Rivers.
- Biobot and CDC expand wastewater tracking to monkeypox: Biobot, the leading COVID-19 wastewater surveillance company, is expanding its work with the CDC to include monkeypox surveillance. As part of the CDC’s National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS), Biobot will coordinate data collection and analysis for both COVID-19 and monkeypox through at least January 2023. “We hope this can demonstrate the flexibility and versatility of this technology for governments across the country,” Biobot president and cofounder Newsha Ghaeli said in a press release.
- Launch of the Data Liberation Project: This is not COVID- or even health-specific, but I wanted to give a quick shout-out to the Data Liberation Project, a new effort by Jeremy Singer-Vine (widely known in data journalism circles as the author of the Data Is Plural newsletter). The new project is “an initiative to identify, obtain, reformat, clean, document, publish, and disseminate government datasets of public interest.” I hope to see some COVID-19 datasets liberated through this project!
Tag: monkeypox
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Sources and updates, October 2
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Sources and updates, September 18
- COVID-19’s impact on the workforce: Economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research released a new working paper this week, showing that COVID-19 has “persistently” reduced the U.S.’s labor supply. Using data from the Census’ Current Population Survey, the researchers found that workers who had to take off at least a week from work due to COVID-19 were seven percentage points less likely to still be in the labor force a year later, compared to those who didn’t miss a week. Overall, Long COVID pushed about 500,000 people out of the workforce, the paper estimates. Notably, this estimate is much lower than the analysis from the Brookings Institution published last month; the gap between these two reports suggests a need for more robust data collection on Long COVID and work.
- Long COVID prevalence from a population survey: Last week, I shared a new preprint from Denis Nash and his team at the City University of New York, reporting on the results of a national survey used to determine true COVID-19 prevalence during the BA.5 surge. This week, Nash et al. shared another preprint from that same survey, focused on Long COVID. Based on the nationally-representative survey (sample size: about 3,000), the researchers estimate about 7.3% of U.S. adults are currently experiencing Long COVID symptoms—matching estimates from the Household Pulse Survey. One-quarter of those Long COVID patients surveyed reported that their day-to-day life activities were significantly impacted.
- Lancet COVID-19 Commission shares lessons from the pandemic: The Lancet COVID-19 Commission is an interdisciplinary group of scientists convened by the journal to study the COVID-19 crisis and make recommendations for the future. In the group’s final report, released this week, the scientists focus on “failures of international cooperation” that have contributed to unnecessary illness and deaths. Those failures include delays in acknowledging that the coronavirus spreads through the air, not enough funding for low- and middle-income countries, “the lack of timely, accurate, and systematic data,” and more.
- COVID-19 archive of Dr. Fauci’s emails: The COVID-19 Archive is a project aiming to compile digital documents tracing the early phases of the pandemic. Its prototype iteration allows users to search and sort through the early-COVID inbox of Dr. Anthony Fauci, via email records contributed by investigative reporter Jason Leopold. (MuckRock, where I work part-time, is a collaborator on the project, but I’m not personally involved with it.)
- U.S. has active circulation of vaccine-derived polio: This week, the CDC and World Health Organization formally announced that the polioviruses spreading in New York state constitute active circulation of vaccine-derived polio. Most other countries that meet this WHO classification are developing nations in Africa, as well as Israel, the U.K., and Ukraine. For more on what exactly “vaccine-derived polio” means and how the disease made a comeback in the U.S., I recommend reading Maryn McKenna in WIRED.
- Neurological symptoms associated with monkeypox: Here’s one study in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that caught my eye this week: the agency has identified two cases in which monkeypox patients faced inflammation in their brains (called encephalomyelitis), leading to neurological symptoms. Both patients were hospitalized and required weeks of rehab, including use of walkers. The CDC says these symptoms are rare but worth monitoring, and is encouraging local health agencies to report any further cases.
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Sources and updates, September 4
Omicron BA.4.6, a newer version of BA.4, is currently more prevalent in the Midwest than other regions of the country. Chart via the CDC, retrieved September 4. - Slow rise of BA.4.6 is worth watching: As I mentioned in today’s National Numbers post, a newer subvariant labeled BA.4.6 is gaining ground over other versions of Omicron in the U.S. BA.4.6 evolved from BA.4, and has an additional mutation in the virus’ spike protein that enables it to bypass protection from prior infections. It’s unclear whether BA.4.6 will be able to fully outcompete BA.5, which is currently causing the vast majority of U.S. COVID-19 cases—these two strains are similar enough that the competition may go slowly. So far, the subvariant has been more prevalent in the Midwest than other regions of the country, according to CDC data. Also worth watching: BA.2.75, a subvariant that is dominating some European countries but hasn’t shown up significantly in the U.S. yet.
- Up to 4 million people may be out of work due to Long COVID: Last week, policy research organization the Brookings Institute published a new report discussing the massive impacts Long COVID is having on America’s labor force. The report utilizes recent data from the Household Pulse Survey (released in June) estimating Long COVID prevalence, in conjunction with research on how many long-haulers might be out of work due to their condition. The results: between two and four million Americans potentially lost their jobs (or are working significantly less) due to Long COVID, costing at least $170 billion a year in lost wages. Even the low ends of these estimates are staggering.
- U.S. life expectancy declined again in 2021: Americans born in 2021 may expect to live for 76 years on average, according to the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System. This is the lowest life expectancy has been since 1996. CDC researchers attribute the sharp decline in the last two years to the pandemic and drug overdose deaths. Disparities in life expectancy have also increased: Native Americans born in 2021 may expect to live only 65 years on average and Black Americans may expect to live 71 years, compared to 76 years for white Americans.
- Biobot expands wastewater surveillance for opioid tracking: In the last couple of months, we’ve seen wastewater used to track monkeypox and polio, in addition to COVID-19—suggesting the technology’s capacity for broader public health surveillance. This week, leading wastewater company Biobot announced a new initiative to track opioid use and other high-risk substance use through a similar platform to its current COVID-19 efforts. Tracking the opioid crisis was actually the original focus for Biobot’s founders pre-pandemic, so it’s notable to see the company expanding in this direction now.
- New technical report on monkeypox outbreak: Speaking of monkeypox, the CDC recently released a detailed report on how the disease has spread through the U.S. and other countries. It’s a new reporting format for the CDC, with the agency releasing data more rapidly than it might have in a scientific study—possibly emulating the U.K. Health Security Agency’s Technical Briefings. Notably, the CDC Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, the agency’s new modeling center, was a key contributor to the report. Former CFA leader Caitlin Rivers shared key findings from the report here. (And for more on CFA, see this story I wrote for FiveThirtyEight in June.)
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COVID source callout: Failures in the U.S. monkeypox response
This is not a direct COVID-19 callout, but I wanted to acknowledge that many of the public health failures we saw early in the COVID-19 crisis are now being repeated with monkeypox—which the WHO just declared a global health emergency.
One major issue is a shortage of tests, leading public health experts to suggest that the true number of cases is much higher than what’s been reported. Also, while vaccines are available for monkeypox, the rollout has been inaccessible and inequitable, with very limited appointments in hotspots like NYC. ACT UP actually held a protest in the city last week to criticize local and federal officials for these issues.
According to BuzzFeed News coverage of the ACT UP protest, their demands included: “an ‘emergency safety net fund’ for those testing positive, increased access to vaccines, language-inclusive educational resources, and adequate staffing for both vaccination sites and quarantine locations.” All of which sounds familiar!
COVID-19 Data Dispatch 