“Wastewater allows us to get insights into not just COVID-19, but other infectious diseases as well,” said Shah. The CDC’s National Wastewater Surveillance System, which launched in 2020, involves collecting wastewater and analyzing it for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in hundreds of sites covering 140 million people (about 40% of the U.S. Other systems, such as wastewater surveillance, will help to provide a window into how cases of COVID-19 might be ebbing and flowing in different communities. Nirav Shah, CDC’s principal deputy director.īut instead of reporting admissions daily, as hospitals do now, they will do so weekly.

“We will still be able to tell that it’s snowing, even though we are no longer counting every snowflake,” said Dr. In a May 5 report, CDC scientists conducted analyses comparing hospital admission data and its correlation to community levels of infections and found a 99% concordance between the two. Brendan Jackson, lead of the CDC’s COVID-19 response, during a briefing. Hospitalizations are “the main driver of community levels of COVID-19,” said Dr. The CDC will now rely on hospital admissions data, which hospitals will continue to report to the CDC. After May 11, states and jurisdictions will no longer be required to report cases to the CDC, so the data the agency will receive won’t allow them to accurately capture the burden of COVID-19 cases in any given county.

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