On September 2, 2022, the federal government stopped taking orders for free at-home COVID-19 tests. The day this program ended, I sent a public records request to the federal government asking for data on how many tests were distributed. I just received some data back from my request; here’s what the numbers show.
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New York City has been closing PCR testing sites, even as the city faced a major Omicron resurgence this spring. The trends I found in a local story—and the pushback that the piece received from city health officials—are pretty indicative of the national state of COVID-19 testing right now.
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Remember how, in December, the CDC changed its recommendations for people who’d tested positive for COVID-19 to isolating for only five days instead of ten? And a bunch of experts were like, “Wait a second, I’m not sure if that’s sound science?” Well, studies since this guidance was changed have shown that, actually, a lot of people with COVID-19 are still contagious after five days. Yet the CDC has not revised its guidance at all.
Read MoreSources and updates for the week of April 10 include safety for large, indoor events; state data reporting frequencies; a new Long COVID task force; COVID-19 testing in schools; and more.
Read MoreSources and updates for the week of March 13 include vaccine data annotations, free rapid tests, a combination of Delta and Omicron, and more.
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My latest story with the Documenting COVID-19 project is an investigation into Utah’s school COVID-19 testing program, in collaboration with the Salt Lake Tribune. We investigated with a once-innovative program failed in fall 2021.
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 MoreA few additional news items from this week, including U.S. deaths caused by Omicron, failure to meet WHO vaccination targets, and a large event that turned out to not be a superspreader.
Read MoreThree additional news items for this week: lawmakers call for Long COVID data; we don’t know yet whether cannabis can treat COVID-19; have you received your free tests yet?
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