May 1, 2023 – The CDC will stop tracking and reporting community-level COVID cases later this month.
That means COVID tracking will grow to be just like how we monitor flu and other respiratory illnesses. There might be an extended delay in knowing how widespread COVID is within the U.S. since the agency relies totally on data on hospitalizations, which usually come long after infection.
The CDC's plans, reported by CNN And NBC Newsmight be implemented after the top of the COVID federal health emergency on May 11.
“With the end of the public health emergency, CDC will no longer receive the same data. We are working to update the measure of communal COVID-19 risk based on available data,” a CDC spokesperson wrote in an email, in response to NBC News. “Our priority remains providing the information needed to protect the nation's public health.”
Community-level reporting allowed people to enter a location right into a web-based CDC. Search function after which receive a color-coded indication of how widespread the virus was within the region. The codes also included safety recommendations based on the variety of cases and other aspects.
The agency also announced that it might postpone the publication of its Weekly review of the COVID data tracker on May 12. In the most recent release of the weekly report, the agency said 17 U.S. communities were severely impacted by COVID and 79 communities were moderately impacted. These communities represented lower than 4% of all places within the U.S.