2023-04-29 10:20:18
Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — With the end of the public health emergency in the United States on May 11, the US Centers for Disease Control and Control (CDC) will stop reporting color-coded community levels of “Covid-19”, as a way to track the spread of infection.
Instead, the CDC will continue to track the COVID-19 epidemiology mainly by tracking hospital-related infections in some areas, according to a source familiar with the agency’s plans.
This method is very similar to the way the agency tracks other respiratory infections, such as influenza.
Hospital infections are a late indicator, as it takes between a week and 10 days for a person to show symptoms before he is transferred to hospital due to infection with the “Covid-19” virus. Therefore, switching to this method may mean that the country loses its ability to early detect the spread of infection.
However, community sewage testing and air travelers will continue to be tested, and this is expected to fill some of those gaps in early infection detection.
“We won’t give up on full surveillance, but we may lose that local hypersensitivity to the spread of Covid,” the source said.
The source stated that the agency may announce the end of its community levels as early as next week, though the timing has yet to be determined.
The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The agency adopted its community levels for the novel coronavirus in late February 2022, replacing the old map that ranked counties by the weekly rate of new infections and the percentage of positive tests for COVID-19.
The new societal levels led to a focus on hospitals, that is, the number of people admitted for treatment due to “Covid-19”, and the number of beds available. The model also took into account the weekly rate of new infections in an area.
The effect was immediate, as the areas that were coded dark red due to the high percentage of casualties, changed to a less threatening color, i.e. yellow or green.
Under the new system adopted by the Centers for Disease Control and Control, there is no longer a need to wear masks in a large part of the country.
According to the source, the change in standards was necessary.
The end of the public health emergency will mean that the government no longer has the authority to require laboratories to report data for COVID-19 tests, which will affect the ability to calculate the “positive percentage” measure.
COVID-19 is a reportable condition, so doctors will need to report cases to public health officials, but the frequency of this reporting may change.
New Mexico, for example, has said it will report its cases monthly from now on.
“Some metrics simply can’t keep up, due to changing data reporting,” the source stated.
The number of cases is actually becoming a less reliable way to track the spread of the virus in a community as people turn to home testing and not report infections to health authorities.
Currently, 97% of counties and territories in the United States have a low level of COVID-19 in the community, 79 counties have a moderate level, and only 15 counties or territories have a high level of virus prevalence.
The number of weekly “Covid-19” cases has steadily decreased since last January. More than 88,000 new COVID-19 cases and 1,052 deaths were reported in the United States last week, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control.
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