Several states reduce their reporting of data on COVID-19 as cases skyrocket

By Josh Funk - The Associated Press

Several states lowered their statistical reporting on COVID-19 this month, just as cases across the country began to skyrocket, depriving the public of real-time information on outbreaks, cases, hospitalizations and deaths in their communities.

The

shift

to weekly instead of daily reports in Florida, Nebraska, Iowa, and South Dakota

represents a notable change in a pandemic in which individuals, businesses, and governments often rely on information about daily case counts and trends. to navigate a crisis that has killed more than 600,000 people in the United States.

In Nebraska, the state completely stopped reporting data for two weeks after Gov. Pete Ricketts declared an end to the official virus emergency, forcing journalists to submit public information requests for data on the state. of the pandemic.

The state responded to the criticism by creating a website where it provides some basic information.

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Other state governments have gone in the opposite direction and released more information.

This week, Washington DC presented data on people who have been infected after being vaccinated.

On the other hand, many states have gone on to report cases only on weekdays.

With the spread of infections, Democratic politicians and other critics have urged state officials and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to resume daily reporting on the coronavirus.

Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts in a Jan. 11, 2021, file photo.

"There was absolutely no reason to remove the daily updates beyond an effort to pretend there is nothing to update," said State Representative Anna Eskamani, an Orlando-area Democrat.

Although specialists assure that having more information in a pandemic is always better, they also believe that there are valid reasons for not presenting data disaggregated by day.

On the one hand,

people have become accustomed to reviewing the daily lists of infections

, hospitalizations and deaths to make everyday decisions such as attending meetings or wearing masks in public, and understanding the level of risk in the community affects how well the regulations are followed. health guidelines and how likely an indecisive person is to be vaccinated.

On the other hand, experts warn that it is more useful for people to be attentive to weekly reports, rather than daily reports, as these allow better observing medium and short-term trends.

There are variations in the daily new case reports that are explained by how the information was collected and not by how many cases there were that day in reality.

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In their defense, Florida Health officials note that they have continued to share disaggregated information on a day-to-day basis with the country's main health authority, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Another point to keep in mind is that daily updates consume important resources for states.

For example, Kansas began reporting data on the pandemic three times a week in May because the state Department of Health claimed that providing daily statistics was taking too much time from its already overwhelmed officials.

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Infectious Disease Specialist Dr. David Brett-Major said that national websites like the CDC's can be a good source of information on the latest state trends and that they could just post the information weekly.

The World Health Organization is one of the bodies that often submits weekly updates, but Brett-Major explained that they do so for practical reasons, not political ones.

The expert said that Nebraska was an example of a problematic message, because

by failing to present the daily data, officials assured that the health emergency was over.

"The main problem is that it reflects a lack of interest in managing risk in the pandemic,"

said Brett-Major of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in this April 30, 2021, file photo.

At a time when the delta variant is, in the words of the CDC director, "spreading with incredible efficiency," Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo - who heads the department of epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco - said that it is important for everyone to be aware of the latest trends and understand the risks.

"Even knowing that the data is available to the decision makers, it is very valuable to provide it to the public," he added.