The CDC Isn’t Publishing All The COVID Data It Collects, Report Says

U.S. states rely heavily on COVID-19 data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but the agency isn’t publishing large amounts of the data it collects.

The New York Times reported that the CDC has been leaving out important data about the effectiveness of boosters in adults under 65 years of age, and that it had only recently provided wastewater data that could help localities predict a surge in coronavirus cases. From The Times:

When the C.D.C. published the first significant data on the effectiveness of boosters in adults younger than 65 two weeks ago, it left out the numbers for a huge portion of that population: 18- to 49-year-olds, the group least likely to benefit from extra shots, because the first two doses already left them well-protected.

The agency recently debuted a dashboard of wastewater data on its website that will be updated daily and might provide early signals of an oncoming surge of Covid cases. Some states and localities had been sharing wastewater information with the agency since the start of the pandemic, but it had never before released those findings.

The Times added that this far into the pandemic, the CDC “has published only a tiny fraction of the data it has collected, several people familiar with the data said.” – READ MORE