- Project Next Gen announces first grants: Project Next Gen, the federal government’s effort to support next-generation COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, announced its first round of scientific funding this week. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has now allocated $1.4 billion of a total $5 billion in the program, with funding going to set up clinical trials for new vaccines and a new monoclonal antibody developed by Regeneron. HHS hasn’t actually selected vaccine candidates yet; that will come in a later announcement. Notably, as I reported on Twitter, HHS officials said during a press conference that they do not anticipate future Project Next Gen funding going towards Long COVID research.
- Biobot Analytics expands to other respiratory viruses: Biobot Analytics, one of the leading COVID-19 wastewater surveillance companies, launched a new testing panel this week for a broader range of respiratory pathogens. The panel will allow health agencies to monitor their local sewersheds for COVID-19, flu, and RSV at the same time. Biobot is rolling this testing option out in time for this year’s respiratory virus season. While the company hasn’t announced this yet, I suspect Biobot will make some data from the respiratory virus testing available online, similar to its current COVID-19 and mpox dashboards.
- KFF launches health misinformation tracker: The Kaiser Family Foundation has announced a new polling effort focused on health misinformation, and released the first round of data from this initiative. This release includes data about COVID-19 and vaccines, as well as other key areas of misinformation like reproductive health and firearms. According to KFF’s surveys, a majority of Americans have heard false claims about COVID-19, such as that the vaccines caused many sudden deaths in otherwise healthy people; smaller but still significant shares of people (around 20% to 30% depending on the statement) say these false claims are true.
- Excess deaths in China after ending restrictions: Last winter, China abruptly ended its “zero COVID” policy (which had included strict quarantines, testing, and other measures), leading the coronavirus to spread widely—but with limited official data tracking its impacts. A new study from researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Washington state examines excess deaths in China, or deaths above historical norms, following that policy change. About 1.87 million excess deaths occurred among Chinese adults over age 30 in just two months after the end of the zero COVID policy, the researchers estimated. These deaths mainly impacted older residents, many of whom weren’t vaccinated against newer variants.
- Long COVID without a positive test: Another notable study from this week: researchers at Northwestern Medicine’s Long COVID clinic compared immune responses and symptoms among patients who did and did not have proof of their initial coronavirus infections. While this was a small study (including just 29 patients), the researchers found that the majority of those without proof of infection had COVID-related immune system signals similar to those patients who did have initial proof. The study offers further evidence to a trend that I’ve long heard in interviews with people with Long COVID: many patients weren’t able to get positive tests during their initial infections but still clearly have Long COVID, and they should not be excluded from research.
- COVID-19 risk for essential workers: One more new study: researchers at the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden, used available occupational data to examine how people in specific jobs were at higher risk for COVID-19 cases. The study included 550,000 cases from October 2020 through December 2021. People working in public-facing jobs such as bus drivers, school staff, and nurses were at higher risk for getting COVID-19—and developing severe symptoms that required hospitalization—than those in less public-facing professions, the researchers found. Essential workers receive less attention now than they did early in the pandemic, but they still need protections to stay safe, the study suggests.
Tag: occupation data
-
Sources and updates, October 30
- More detailed bivalent booster data: As of this week, the CDC is reporting some demographic data for the bivalent, Omicron-specific booster shots. The new data suggest that these boosters have had higher uptake among seniors, with about 11 million people over age 65 receiving a shot (compared to just 60,000 in the 5 to 11 age group). White and Asian Americans have higher booster rates than Black, Hispanic, and Native Americans, suggesting that the new doses are following a similar equity pattern to what we’ve seen with prior vaccines.
- COVID-19 mortality by occupation: A new report by the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System provides a rare area of data we don’t usually get in the U.S.: occupational data. CDC researchers used mortality data from 46 states and New York City to examine risk of death by occupation. People working in protective services, accommodation and food services, and other essential jobs that couldn’t be done remotely had the highest death rates—confirming what many public health experts have suspected throughout the pandemic.
- Life expectancy changes during the pandemic: A new study published in Nature, by researchers at the University of Oxford and other European institutions, estimated how life expectancy changed in 29 countries since the start of the pandemic. After a universal life expectancy decline in 2020, the researchers found, some western European countries “bounced back” in 2021 while the U.S. and eastern European countries did not. The results show the impacts of lower vaccination uptake in the U.S., particularly among younger adults.
- Disparities in Paxlovid prescriptions: Another CDC study that caught my attention this week was this analysis in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), describing racial and ethnic disparities in prescriptions of Paxlovid—the antiviral COVID-19 treatment which reduces risk of severe symptoms. Between April and July 2022, the researchers found, the share of COVID-19 patients over age 20 who received a Paxlovid prescription was 36% lower among Black patients than among White patients, and 30% lower among Hispanic patients. More work is needed to make Paxlovid availability more equitable.
- New estimates of Long COVID prevalence: One more notable paper published this week: researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard, and collaborators conducted an online survey of about 16,000 U.S. adults who tested positive for COVID-19 in the last two months. Of those survey respondents, 15% reported current symptoms of Long COVID. The survey found that older adults and women were more likely to report Long COVID, while those who were fully vaccinated prior to infection had a somewhat lower risk of long-term symptoms. All of these findings are in line with results from other studies, but it’s helpful to see continued validation of these known trends.
-
Five more things, May 9
I couldn’t decide which of these news items to focus on for a short post this week, so I wrote blurbs for all five. This title and format are inspired by Rob Meyer’s Weekly Planet newsletter.
- HHS added vaccinations to its facility-level hospitalization dataset: Last week, I discussed the HHS’s addition of COVID-19 patient admissions by age to its state-level hospitalization dataset. This week, the HHS followed that up with new fields in its facility-level dataset, reflecting vaccinations among hospital staff and patients. You can find the dataset here and read more about the new fields in the FAQ here (starting on page 14). It’s crucial to note that these are optional fields, meaning hospitals can submit their other COVID-19 numbers without any vaccination reporting. Only about 3,200 of the total 5,000 facilities in the HHS dataset have opted in—so don’t sum these numbers to draw conclusions about your state or county. Still, this is the most detailed occupational data I’ve seen for the U.S. thus far.
- A new IHME analysis suggests the global COVID-19 death toll may be double reported counts: 3.3 million people have died from COVID-19 worldwide as of May 8, according to the World Health Organization. But a new modeling study from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) suggests that the actual death number is 6.9 million. Under-testing and overburdened healthcare systems may contribute to reporting systems missing COVID-19 deaths, though the reasons—and the undercount’s magnitude—are different in each country. In the U.S., IHME estimates about 900,000 deaths, while the CDC counts 562,000. Read STAT’s Helen Branswell for more context on this study.
- The NYT published a dangerous misrepresentation of vaccine hesitancy (then quietly corrected it): A New York Times story on herd immunity garnered a lot of attention (and Twitter debate) earlier this week. One specific aspect of the story stuck out to some COVID-19 data experts, though: a U.S. map entitled, “Uneven Willingness to Get Vaccinated Could Affect Herd Immunity.” The map, based on HHS estimates, claims to display vaccine confidence at the county level. But the estimates are really more reflective of state averages, and moreover, the NYT originally double-counted the people who are strongly opposed to vaccines, leading to a map that made the U.S. look much more hesitant than it actually is. Biologist Carl Bergstrom has a thread detailing the issue, including original and corrected versions of the map.
- We still need better demographic data: A poignant article in The Atlantic from Ibram Kendi calls attention to gaps in COVID-19 data collection that continue to loom large, more than a year into the pandemic. The story primarily discusses race and ethnicity data, citing the COVID Racial Data Tracker (which I worked on), but Kendi also highlights other underreported populations. For example: “The only available COVID-19 data on undocumented immigrants come from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers.”
- NIH college student trial is having a hard time recruiting: If you, like me, have been curious about how that big NIH trial to study vaccine effectiveness in college students has progressed since it was announced last March, I recommend this story from U.S. News reporter Chelsea Cirruzzo. The study aimed to recruit 12,000 students at a select number of colleges, but because the vaccine rollout has progressed faster than expected, researchers are having a hard time finding not-yet-vaccinated students to enroll. (1,000 are enrolled so far.) Now, students at all higher ed institutions can join.
-
CDC says 80% of teachers and childcare workers are vaccinated, fails to provide more specifics
This past Tuesday, April 6, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put out a press release that I found heartening, yet confusing.
“Nearly 80 percent of teachers, school staff, and childcare workers receive at least one shot of COVID-19 vaccine,” the release proclaims. These vaccinations include “more than 2 million” people in these professions who received doses through the federal retail pharmacy program and “5-6 million” vaccinated through state programs, all of whom received shots before the end of March.
This CDC release is exciting because occupational data—or, figures tying vaccination counts to the jobs of those who got vaccinated—have been few and far between. As I wrote last month, state and local health departments have been unprepared to track this type of data; even getting states to report the race and ethnicity of their vaccinated residents has been a struggle.
While you may need to be a teacher or fit another essential worker category in order to get vaccinated in your state, your provider may require you to show some proof of eligibility without recording that eligibility status anywhere. Meanwhile, school districts and local public health departments might be wary of surveying their local teachers to see who’s been vaccinated. Madeline Will explains the issue in EdWeek:
Yet many vaccination sites do not collect or report occupation data, and many districts are not tracking vaccination rates themselves. Some district leaders say they’re wary of asking employees if they’ve gotten vaccinated because they don’t want to run afoul of any privacy laws, although the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has said that employers can ask whether employees have gotten a COVID-19 vaccine.
This brings us to the question: how did the CDC get its 80% figure? The agency’s press release is frustratingly unspecific; it’s all of 282 words long, with just one paragraph devoted to what a data journalist like myself would call the methodology, or the explanation of where the data come from.
Here’s that explanation:
CDC, in collaboration with the Administration for Children and Families, the Department of Education, and our non-federal partners, conducted surveys of Pre-K-12 teachers, school staff, and childcare workers at the end of March. CDC received almost 13,000 responses from education staff and nearly 40,000 responses from childcare workers. The responses closely matched available national race/ethnicity and demographic data on this specific workforce.
Let’s unpack this. The CDC worked with two other federal agencies to conduct a survey of this high-priority occupation group, including 13,000 school staff and 40,000 childcare workers. The agency then extrapolated the results of this 53,000-person survey to estimate that 80% of Americans in these occupations have been vaccinated overall. While the CDC doesn’t provide any detail on how workers were chosen for the survey, the press release notes that responses match demographic data for this workforce, indicating that agency researchers did collect race, ethnicity, and other demographic information for those they surveyed.
So, here’s my big question: is the CDC planning to release more detailed results from this survey? And if not… why?
As we’ve noted in past CDD issues, teacher vaccination can go a long way towards inspiring confidence in school reopening programs, in school staff and parents alike. And that confidence is needed right now: February results of the Department of Education’s school COVID-19 survey, released last week, demonstrate that even though the majority of U.S. schools are now offering in-person instruction, only about one-third of students are learning in the classroom full-time. (More on those findings via AP’s Collin Binkley.)
If the CDC released results of this vaccination survey for individual states and demographic groups, local public health and school district leadership may be able to see how their populations compare and respond accordingly. If, say, Texas is vaccinating fewer teachers than New York, Governor Greg Abbott can make a speech telling his state to step it up.
And those states where a higher share of teachers have been vaccinated can use the information to inform school opening plans. The CDC’s press release doesn’t specify what share of that 80% vaccinated represents partially versus fully vaccinated school and childcare workers (which would also be useful data!), but even a workforce that was partially vaccinated at the end of March may be ready for in-person work by the end of April.
All this is to say: show your work, CDC! Give us more detailed data!
It’s also important to note, though, that while teachers are in the spotlight, they aren’t the only occupation for whom vaccination data should be a priority. Many staff in long-term care facilities have been unwilling to get vaccinated even though it would be a highly protective measure for the seniors they care for, Liz Essley Whyte wrote in late March at The Center for Public Integrity.
The federal program that partnered with pharmacy chains to get LTC residents and staff vaccinated is now winding down, Whyte reports, even though some states still have a lot of LTC workers left who need shots. In seven states and D.C., less than a third of staff are vaccinated.
Whyte writes:
Low vaccination rates among staff at these facilities mean that workers continue to have greater risk of contracting COVID-19 themselves or passing the virus to their patients, including residents who can’t be inoculated for medical reasons. Low staff uptake can also complicate nursing homes’ attempt to reopen their doors to visitors like Caldwell, who are striving for some sense of normalcy.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are hoping to improve data on this issue. This agency proposed a new rule this week that would require nursing homes to tell the CDC how many of their health care workers are vaccinated against COVID-19, POLITICO reported on Friday. This rule would enable the CMS to identify specific facilities that are faring poorly and take appropriate action. And, if such data are made public, it would be easier for both reporters and families of nursing home residents to push for more LTC worker vaccinations.
Still, privacy concerns continue to be a barrier for more detailed vaccination data of all types. Some of the big pharmacy chains that are administering huge shares of shots are requiring vaccine recipients to share their emails or phone numbers when they register for an appointment—then saving that data to use for future marketing. Getting patient contact information is an easy way to ensure people actually show up for their appointments, but when it’s a private company collecting your phone number instead of your public health department, it’s understandable that people might be a bit concerned about giving any information away.
More detailed data standards, along with communication between governments and vaccine providers, could have saved the U.S. from the patchwork of vaccination data we’re now facing. But instead, here we are. Asking the CDC to please send out a longer press release. Maybe with a state-by-state data table included.
COVID-19 Data Dispatch 