As US public health emergency deadline approaches, CDC to stop tracking community Covid numbers

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA, is planning to stop tracking the spread of COVID-19 in communities around the country. Since February of last year, the agency was using a colour-coded system to show county-by-county transmission of coronavirus across the US. The transmission was colour-coded into high, medium and low.

As per a CNN report citing sources in the know, from May 11 — when the United States public health emergency expires — the CDC will keep a tab on Covid infections by tracking hospitalisations in some areas.

This tracking method is reminiscent of how CDC tracks other respiratory illnesses like the flu.

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However, as per the report, hospitalisations are a “lagging indicator” as it generally takes a person infected with COVID-19 around a week to 10 days to be hospitalised with infections. 

Furthermore, with the availability of rapid, at-home tests, an accurate view of the infections has become difficult.

CDC will, however, continue wastewater testing in communities and will also continue testing air travellers.

The end of community levels tracking could be announced as early as next week. However, as per CNN’s source, the timing is yet to be finalised.

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“We’re not going to lose complete surveillance, but we will lose that hyper-local sensitivity to it perhaps,” they said.

CDC’s current method replaced an older map that colour-coded counties by their weekly rate of new infections, and the number of positive tests. 

The end of US public health energy means that the country’s government no longer has the authority to require labs to report their COVID-19 testing numbers. This, as per CNN, will affect the nation’s ability to calculate a metric called per cent positivity.

However, coronavirus remains a reportable condition. This means that the doctors will have to report data to public health officials, but the frequency of that might change. Reportedly, New Mexico said it will report cases every month.

In the US, weekly number of Covid cases has been on a decline since January. At the moment, 97 per cent of counties and territories have low levels of COVID-19 infections at community levels. Only 15 counties or districts are at a high level, while 79 counties are at a medium level.

(With inputs from agencies)

 

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