Most States Curtailing Reporting

[JimO]

Over the past two weeks, most states have changed their reporting format. Some are following the CDC's lead and providing weekly updates of hospitalizations and deaths. However, many more have stopped providing case numbers and total deaths, much less hospitalizations. In place of this, they are posting their weekly surveillance reports. Unfortunately, many of those reports only report the number of pediatric deaths for the season and don't help us much in our efforts. I suspect that most other states will follow suit over the next couple of weeks and we will be left with CDC's total for the entire U.S., county health department websites, and media reports.

 

[MedTroll]

Re: Most States Curtailing Reporting

I have been noticing the same pattern. It concerns me. The CDC numbers are not valueless, but make it impossible to determine any types of patterns concerning age, region, etc.

It also concerns me that for the first time since this all started, the CDC weekly numbers were considerably higher than those reported at FluTrackers. It could be that they are just now reporting deaths that we reported weeks ago. Unfortunately I worry this is not the case. I think it more likely that the CDC is posting reports of deaths of which we are unaware.

I am not sure how to procede at this point. Ideas?

MT