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OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – Several states reduced their reports on COVID-19 statistics this month as cases across the country began to skyrocket, depriving the public of real-time information on outbreaks, cases, hospitalizations and deaths in their communities.
The move to weekly reports instead of daily reports in Florida, Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota marked a notable shift during a pandemic in which coronavirus dashboards have become a staple for patients. Americans closely following the number of cases and trends to navigate a crisis that has killed more than 600,000 people in the United States
In Nebraska, the state actually shut down reporting on the virus for two weeks after Governor Pete Ricketts declared the official viral emergency over, forcing reporters to file public registration requests or turn around. to national websites that track state data to learn more about COVID. statistics. The state backtracked two weeks later and came up with a weekly site that provides some basic numbers.
Other governments have gone the other way and released more information, Washington, DC, adding a breakthrough case dashboard this week to show the number of residents who contracted the virus after receiving vaccines . Many states have recently moved to reporting virus counts only on weekdays.
When Florida changed the frequency of its virus reports earlier this month, officials said it made sense given the dwindling number of cases and the growing number of people vaccinated.
Cases began to skyrocket soon after, and Florida earlier this week accounted for a fifth of the nation’s new coronavirus infections. As a result, Florida’s weekly posts – typically done on Friday afternoons – impact the country’s understanding of the current summer wave, without any statewide COVID statistics coming out of the hotspot. virus for six days a week.
In Florida’s last two weekly reports, the number of new cases rose from 23,000 to 45,000, then to 73,000 on Friday, an average of more than 10,000 days. Hospitals are starting to run out of space in parts of the state.
With the increase in cases, Democrats and other critics have urged state officials and Governor Ron DeSantis to resume daily updates of the outbreak.
“There was absolutely no reason to eliminate daily updates beyond an effort to pretend there was no update,” State Representative Anna Eskamani said, a Democrat from the Orlando area.
The trend of downsizing data reporting has alarmed infectious disease specialists who think it’s best to have additional information during a pandemic. People have come to rely on the state’s virus dashboards to help decide whether to attend large gatherings or wear masks in public, and understanding the level of risk in the community affects how whose people are responding to viral restrictions and calls for vaccinations.
“We know that showing the data to others is actually important because the actions taken by businesses, actions taken by schools, actions taken by civic leaders, actions taken by community leaders, actions that each of us undertakes individually are all influenced. by our perception of the existing risk, ”said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, who heads the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco.
But reporting the numbers on a weekly basis still allows people to see overall trends while smoothing out some of the daily variations that come from how cases are reported and not from the actual number of new cases. And experts have long said it makes sense to pay more attention to the seven-day moving average of new cases, as the numbers can vary widely from day to day.
And Florida health officials say they haven’t restricted data sharing with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Maintaining daily virus updates requires significant resources for states. For example, Kansas began reporting the number of viruses three times a week in May as the state’s health department said providing daily statistics is taking too long for its already overwhelmed staff.
In Nebraska, officials decided that continuing to update the virus dashboard daily was not the best use of state resources now, in part because there had been a steady decline in the number. of website views indicating less interest in the numbers, spokeswoman Olga Dack said. . The state could revert to providing daily updates if the governor’s office decides it is necessary, she said.
“Now that Nebraska is back to normal, some of the staff that has been dedicated to the dash have been able to focus on some of the other big issues,” Dack said.
State health departments have a long history of providing the public with regular updates on other illnesses like influenza and West Nile, but these viruses have none of the political baggage associated with COVID-19.
In Florida, a former health department employee was fired last year after publicly suggesting that managers wanted her to manipulate information on coronavirus statistics to paint a rosier picture. The employee, Rebekah Jones, did not allege any tampering with the data, but her comments cast doubts on the reliability of the measurements.
Infectious disease specialist Dr David Brett-Major said that for many people, national websites like the one run by the CDC can be a good source of data on the latest trends in the state and that Weekly updates might be acceptable. The World Health Organization often uses weekly updates, but he said they do so for practical data management reasons, not political ones.
He said the message Nebraska sent at the end of its dashboard that the state of emergency was over and conditions were returning to normal was troubling.
“The main problem is that it reflects a disinterest in managing pandemic risk,” said Brett-Major, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center at Omaha.
Janet Hamilton, executive director of the State Council and Territorial Epidemiologists, said part of the problem is that public health officials typically don’t have sophisticated data systems, so it’s more laborious to produce the tables. daily on-board. Even though public health agencies have cash for their operations at a time when pandemic government spending is plentiful, they haven’t necessarily had the chance to level up.
“It would be great if the Daily Reports could be widely disseminated, but public health should be better funded to do so and that is just not the case at the moment,” Hamilton said.
And even in states where virus numbers aren’t reported publicly every day, health officials are still reviewing the latest data, Hamilton said.
But at a time when the delta variant is, in the words of the CDC director, “spreading with incredible efficiency,” Bibbins-Domingo said it was important that everyone could see the latest trends and understand the risks. .
“Even though we know it is available to decision makers on a daily basis, it is very useful to provide the data to the public,” she said.
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