The way the US government tracks Covid-19 is changing

CNN
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when in the US Public Health Emergency Ends On May 11, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will have to change some of the ways it tracks Covid-19 in the United States, but the agency remains part of it, so it’s not going to lose any perspective on infections. says no. American life.

On Thursday, for the first time in three years, the CDC will stop tallying Covid-19 cases nationwide. The agency’s color-coded maps of transmission and disease burden at the county level have been discontinued, CDC no longer tracks variants down to the state level, and instead of weekly he updates genome surveillance estimates every two weeks.

“While future data will vary, they continue to provide timely insights for the CDC, local health officials, and the public to understand the dynamics of Covid-19,” said Nirav Shah, CDC’s Chief Deputy Director. says Dr.

“In short, even if you stop counting all the snowflakes, you still know it’s snowing.”

Instead of tracking Covid-19 cases, officials track the burden and spread of the disease, primarily through hospitalizations and deaths.

The move to stop posting national case numbers is largely symbolic. The number of Covid-19 cases known to public health officials has long been underestimated. The rate of detected cases has fallen even further as people have turned to rapid testing at home for diagnosis.At some point during the pandemic, experts said the actual number of cases was 14 times more From official count.

Other metrics people are accustomed to seeing in the CDC’s Covid Data Tracker will also be retired. as CNN previously reportedthe CDC released detailed, color-coded Covid-19 infection levels and associated recommendations for when to wear a mask when it’s a good idea to test people to prevent the spread of the disease. Stop publishing Covid-19 community level map When to avoid large indoor public gatherings.

More states are expected to stop reporting Covid-19 cases to the CDC once the public health emergency ends.For example, Iowa has already stoppedAs such, the CDC says it’s impractical to maintain national tallies or update maps.

Future recommendations on preventive measures such as masking will instead be associated with hospitalization levels.

Covid-19 will retain its designation as a national notifiable disease, but that is just a recommendation, says Dr. Brendan Jackson, who leads the CDC’s Covid-19 response. No permissions. Whether to share those numbers when the public health emergency ends will be a state-by-state decision, Jackson said Thursday.

The CDC says it will continue to publish the number of cases it gets from states, but it’s in a separate section of its website and the numbers aren’t totaled.

Some experts say the CDC is disappointed to have to return to the old fragmented system of asking states to share their data.

Beth Brauer, Vice President for Public Sector Innovation at Johns Hopkins University, said:

“I don’t think it makes much sense for states to do all this independently, because it doesn’t help us understand the impact the disease is having on our communities as a whole,” Brauer said. rice field.

She also said it would be very difficult to put this system back together in the event of another large and imminent public health threat.

Starting next week, the number of vaccinations will be optional. Jackson said most, but not all, of the 64 jurisdictions reporting to the CDC have signed data use agreements to share vaccine dose numbers. They may not share as much about who is vaccinated or vaccinated as often as they have in the past, and for future vaccination campaigns, broader racial, It could limit a nation’s ability to spot ethnic or socioeconomic disparities.Starting in June, the CDC said it would update immunization data monthly.

Laboratories no longer need to send test data to the CDC. This impedes our ability to understand the positive test rate. Early in the pandemic, this metric helped determine whether public health officials were testing enough or whether infections were spreading. Communities were rising or falling. Prevalence was used not only for infection maps, but also for variant tracking by the CDC.

The CDC has some lab test data from another system called the National Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System, a network of about 450 labs that help track diseases like influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Get.

Variant tracking will continue, but the CDC needs to adjust some of the metrics it uses to model variant proportions. State-level estimates of variant proportions are gone, but regional-level estimates remain. These will now be updated twice a month instead of weekly as they are now.

It will also change how the CDC collects data about deaths. Instead of collecting numbers from state websites and getting reports directly from states that counted deaths based on the date reported, the CDC is turning to a nationwide system that counts deaths based on death certificate data. switch. The agency says the system will be more timely and a more stable way to count Covid-19 deaths going forward.It will also add new metrics to death reports. That’s the percentage of all reported deaths that week attributed to Covid-19.

Hospitals will still be required to report Covid-19 data through April 2024, but will not track as many metrics or submit that information frequently. Hospitals have shared information daily for most of the pandemic, but now report weekly.

Hospitalizations and deaths are known as lagging indicators because they only increase after people get sick. A study released Friday by CDC epidemiologists shows that hospitalizations may not be lagging behind cases as much as we once thought.

of new researchCovid-19 hospitalizations lag one day behind the increase in reported cases and four days behind the increase in emergency room visits, published in the CDC’s weekly morbidity and mortality report. is shown.

The study also shows that the new system the CDC uses to track deaths trended 13 days earlier than data collected from states, the obsolete system.

Low case levels in most of the country have either eliminated the need for this kind of insight, or scientists have found other ways to obtain information, such as testing wastewater. Rising spreads. Wastewater testing is available in some locations, but not all regions have this capability.

CDC will also maintain traveler monitoring, testing airplane waste water Trying to find new threats coming in.

The CDC also maintains something called the Sentinel System. This is a small but nationally representative network of hospitals and laboratories that provides more detailed data. This is much like how authorities track patterns of other respiratory diseases such as influenza and respiratory syncytial virus. Said it helps.

Instead, we will use hospital admissions and emergency room visits as the primary method of tracking Covid-19 and as the basis for our recommendations. For example, if an area has a high rate of hospitalization, wearing a mask is recommended, Jackson said.

CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky acknowledged some of these data changes at a Senate committee hearing this week, but said the CDC has not “turned the tide” on its work on Covid-19. emphasized.

“As the public health emergency is due to end next week, the CDC is not changing its course of efforts to resolve this public health emergency,” Wallensky said at a Senate committee hearing. I want to repeat it,” he said. About health education, labor and pensions.

“This is the case after the public health emergency is over, and there will be fewer windows for data,” she said. “We don’t get laboratory reports. We don’t have case reports. So we’re going to lose some of that.”