The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently announced amid little fanfare that it would end daily covid reports, shifting to weekly updates to its nationwide tracking of the virus.
“To allow for additional reporting flexibility, reduce the reporting burden on states and jurisdictions, and maximize surveillance resources, CDC is moving to a weekly reporting cadence,” the agency wrote in a post to explain the move.Starting on October 20, state and local health departments will now only need to report new COVID-19 cases and deaths to the agency every week on Wednesdays.
The agency should really be ending the reports entirely, as the “pandemic is over” according to Biden.
It appears many states have already gone to a weekly reporting schedule anyway.
White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said in a Friday briefing that many states had already made the informal shift to weekly surveillance, which led to inconsistent information.“What I think CDC is doing is moving to a weekly cadence that reflects where states are across the country,” he said. “That said, the COVID team at the White House, the work of the CDC on looking at data and analysis – that continues at seven days a week where we have daily data available.
Interestingly, the decision is coming as covid cases are now surging in Europe.
Infections have been rising in many European countries, including the U.K., France, and Italy.”In the past, what’s happened in Europe often has been a harbinger for what’s about to happen in the United States,” says Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “So I think the bottom line message for us in this country is: We have to be prepared for what they are beginning to see in Europe.”
Of course, with the current administration, there is a good chance the decision is based on science….political science.
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