CDC relies on insufficient data from hospitals on advanced COVID-19 infections to help make decisions as to who should receive vaccine-boosting vaccines, officials with knowledge of the issue have reported Politician in a report dated August 25th.
The CDC initially tried to track all infections, from mild to severe, in vaccinated people, but in May changed its protocol to focus on more severe cases. By tracking only the advanced cases that result in hospitalization or death, the agency said it hoped to improve the quality of the data collected for serious cases that were of the greatest clinical and public health importance.
Forty-nine states now regularly send information to the CDC about advanced hospitalized patients, but more than a dozen state officials said Politician they do not have the bandwidth that matches the hospital admission data of the patients with their vaccination records. These states, in turn, turn to hospital administrators to report advanced infections, which has led to data that often leave out critical details, such as the vaccine a person received and whether they received two shots. , officials said.
These data gaps have raised concerns about how Biden administration can identify and respond to changes in virus behavior, such as delta variant spread or vaccine performance, according to the report.
“I think it would really be a challenge [for the CDC] to interpret the results or interpret the data when you only report a few jurisdictions, “said Theresa Sokol, chief epidemiologist at the Louisiana Department of Public Health, according to the report.” I know there are some jurisdictions that don’t even have access to their vaccination data. ”
The publication reported that the Louisiana Department of Public Health is working closely with the CDC on advanced infection studies.