The CDC Is Relaxing Covid Surveillance Just As Winter Is Coming

Hi, it’s Immanual, in New York City. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is pulling back on its Covid surveillance efforts, while elsewhere public health officials are calling for the opposite. But first...

To reopen the campus in fall 2020, my alma mater, Vanderbilt University, conducted mandatory weekly Covid testing, which eventually became randomized testing as we started to creep back into something like normal life. Since then, many universities have moved on to on-demand testing — a strategy likely to only pick up symptomatic cases, potentially after there has already been significant viral spread.

Now, that same pullback on Covid surveillance has made its way to the CDC. Two days from now, the agency will transition to issuing weekly reports on Covid infections, rather than the daily tabulations that we’ve become accustomed to in almost three years of the pandemic. As justification for the change, health officials cited the burden that counting and reporting cases places on states. They also reflect the reality that many states have already begun to put those resources elsewhere.