Oct. 8, 2022 — The U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention says it’ll begin updating COVID-19 case and demise counts on a weekly as an alternative of a every day foundation beginning Oct. 20.
“To permit for extra reporting flexibility, scale back the reporting burden on states and jurisdictions, and maximize surveillance sources, CDC is shifting to a weekly reporting cadence for line degree and mixture case and demise knowledge,” the CDC mentioned Thursday.
The CDC remains to be offering every day knowledge on COVID hospitalizations, utilizing data from the Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid Providers. It’s unknown if that may change when the Nationwide Healthcare Security Community takes duty for the gathering of COVID hospital knowledge mid-December, the CDC mentioned.
The CDC has been publishing every day COVID knowledge for greater than two years. The CDC’s COVID neighborhood degree rankings are already up to date as soon as every week, on Thursdays. State and native governments use neighborhood degree rankings in deciding when and the place residents needs to be suggested to put on masks.
The change is one other signal of a de-escalation in COVID response as the key pandemic statistics drop. The New York Occasions reported that on Oct. 7 america was averaging 40,186 new COVID instances a day (a 26% drop over two weeks), 26,994 COVID-related hospitalizations (an 11% drop), and 380 COVID-related deaths (an 11% drop). Well being consultants say the case counts are literally increased as a result of many house testing outcomes should not reported to well being businesses.
Earlier this week, the CDC introduced it might now not preserve an inventory of journey advisories for overseas international locations as a result of “fewer international locations are testing or reporting COVID-19 instances,” The New York Occasions reported. As a substitute, the CDC will publish well being notices when just for “a regarding Covid-19 variant” in a specific nation.
Anthony Fauci, the White Home chief medical advisor, mentioned Tuesday that COVID instances could rise this winter, particularly if a brand new COVID variant emerges.
“Though we are able to really feel good that we’re entering into the correct route, we are able to’t let our guard down,” Fauci mentioned in a dialogue hosted by the USC Annenberg Middle for Well being Journalism. “We’re getting into into the winter months, the place it doesn’t matter what the respiratory illness is, there’s all the time a threat of an uptick.”
