![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
From The Atlantic
The COVID Data That Are Actually Useful Now
Move over, case rates and hospitalizations. The next generation of COVID tracking is here.
By Betsy Ladyzhets
OCTOBER 17, 2022
URL:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/10/fall-winter-covid-cases-wave-data-predictions/671768/
It is a truth universally acknowledged among health experts that official COVID-19 data are a mess right now. Since the Omicron surge last winter, case counts from public-health agencies have become less reliable. PCR tests have become harder to access and at-home tests are typically not counted.
Official case numbers now represent “the tip of the iceberg” of actual infections, Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at the City University of New York, told me. Although case rates may seem low now, true infections may be
up to 20 times higher.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/covid-testing-providers-scale-back-worries-another-winter-surge-rcna47777
And even those case numbers are no longer available on a daily basis in many places, as the CDC and
most state agencies
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/state-reporting-frequencies
have switched to updating their data once a week
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/faq-surveillance.html#Surveillance-4-answer
instead of every day.
How, then, is anyone supposed to actually keep track of the COVID-19 risk in their area—especially when cases are expected to increase this fall and winter? Using newer data sources, such as wastewater surveillance and population surveys, experts have already noticed potential signals of a fall surge: Official case counts are trending down across the U.S., but
Northeast cities such as Boston
https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm
are seeing more coronavirus in their wastewater, and
the CDC reports that this region is a hot spot
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions
for further-mutated versions of the Omicron variant. Even if you’re not an expert, you can still get a clearer picture of how COVID-19 is hitting your community in the weeks ahead. You’ll simply need to understand how to interpret these alternate data sources.
Betsy Ladyzhets is a science, health, and data journalist. She writes the
COVID-19 Data Dispatch
https://coviddatadispatch.com/
blog and newsletter.
The COVID Data That Are Actually Useful Now
Move over, case rates and hospitalizations. The next generation of COVID tracking is here.
By Betsy Ladyzhets
OCTOBER 17, 2022
URL:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/10/fall-winter-covid-cases-wave-data-predictions/671768/
It is a truth universally acknowledged among health experts that official COVID-19 data are a mess right now. Since the Omicron surge last winter, case counts from public-health agencies have become less reliable. PCR tests have become harder to access and at-home tests are typically not counted.
Official case numbers now represent “the tip of the iceberg” of actual infections, Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at the City University of New York, told me. Although case rates may seem low now, true infections may be
up to 20 times higher.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/covid-testing-providers-scale-back-worries-another-winter-surge-rcna47777
And even those case numbers are no longer available on a daily basis in many places, as the CDC and
most state agencies
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/state-reporting-frequencies
have switched to updating their data once a week
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/faq-surveillance.html#Surveillance-4-answer
instead of every day.
How, then, is anyone supposed to actually keep track of the COVID-19 risk in their area—especially when cases are expected to increase this fall and winter? Using newer data sources, such as wastewater surveillance and population surveys, experts have already noticed potential signals of a fall surge: Official case counts are trending down across the U.S., but
Northeast cities such as Boston
https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm
are seeing more coronavirus in their wastewater, and
the CDC reports that this region is a hot spot
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions
for further-mutated versions of the Omicron variant. Even if you’re not an expert, you can still get a clearer picture of how COVID-19 is hitting your community in the weeks ahead. You’ll simply need to understand how to interpret these alternate data sources.
Betsy Ladyzhets is a science, health, and data journalist. She writes the
COVID-19 Data Dispatch
https://coviddatadispatch.com/
blog and newsletter.
