Health experts are concerned that dwindling access to public data, the shuttering of COVID-19 testing sites, and an increasing number of people using at-home tests instead, could leave the nation vulnerable to an unforeseen resurgence in the virus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the federal agency that compiles all the data generated during the past two years of the Coronavirus pandemic, but on its own, the CDC does not have the authority to collect that data.
Under the public health emergency first declared by the Trump administration in 2020, the federal government was able to access an array of funds and authorities to curb outbreaks. The declaration, which must be renewed every 90 days, was last extended in mid-January.
That includes the power Congress gave the federal government in the CARES Act to compel laboratories to report COVID-19 test results “until the end of the Secretary’s Public Health Emergency declaration with respect to COVID-19 or any extension of such declaration.”
So, to the casual observer, the guidance generated by the CDC and other state and local health agencies is important to effectively respond to the pandemic.
“Comprehensive case data is critical to an effective response. As we have seen throughout the pandemic, lack of data leads to poor decision making and ultimately costs lives,” Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor, said.
However, since last summer, dozens of states and federal agencies have opted to scale back on regular data reporting. Only a few states still offer COVID-19 data reports seven days a week, with most now moving to weekly or alternate-day schedules.
Added to this lack of data, the country has just begun to come out of a surge in cases caused by the Omicron variant, even as a new variant – BA.2 – is beginning to spread across the country.
Vaccination rates in the U.S. have begun to stagnate, with fewer than 66 percent of the population fully vaccinated and fewer than half of adults in the United States having received boosters.
We need to track this virus
And through all this, the American pandemic response has also been faulted for an at times laggard pace at tracking and analyzing the spread of the virus compared to its counterparts abroad.
Surprisingly, the biggest question on the public’s mind is when the pandemic will become an endemic or regularly recurring virus, like seasonal influenza. Yet, the scientific community does not yet know what an endemic level of infections for COVID-19 looks like.
“We can’t return to the world as it was before the pandemic, but there are concrete, measurable ways we can forge ahead and begin to understand this disease as just another seasonal virus,” Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, vice provost for global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a statement earlier this month.
Emanuel coordinated the 136-page “A Roadmap for Living with COVID” report earlier this month, which was co-authored by several health experts who had served as top outside COVID-19 advisers to Biden’s team.
One of the most important recommendations in the report was for policymakers to build “a secure, standardized, and real-time national data platform for SARS-CoV-2 and other health threats” and mandate state reporting.
Bottom line? Without clear, concise, and consistent reporting of relevant data on the coronavirus, the U.S. is flying blind, and more so when the public health declaration lapses. When that happens, the CDC will no longer have access to many key data metrics.
“System-wide modernization and change to benefit all of public health require CDC to have the authority to coordinate and guide how data are reported and shared for evidence-based decision-making,” the CDC representative said. “The nation can no longer continue with the current, fractured approach of collecting public health data to be better prepared for future pandemics.”
