Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention remains to be attempting to enhance the best way it collects and analyzes public well being knowledge, Politico reported.
A March sixteenth electronic mail reviewed by Politico from Dan Jernigan, the CDC’s deputy director for Public Well being Science and Surveillance, talked about the Information Modernization Initiative — a plan that would come with integrating state and federal knowledge methods and giving states funding to rent staffers to work with knowledge.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the stark limitations of the US public well being knowledge methods: data is siloed at particular person hospitals and native well being departments and infrequently takes a winding path earlier than it will get to the federal stage. Labs couldn’t ship data on instances straight from their very own knowledge methods to the CDC, counting on emails and faxes to move alongside data. Some data-collection packages required guide entry. It took weeks and months for federal companies to determine solutions to questions that different international locations had the methods to reply in real-time.
Jernigan informed Politico that the CDC is spending $3 billion to assist states rent and practice new workers to work with public well being knowledge. The CDC’s renewed efforts come as the US stares down one more wave of viral an infection from COVID-19 variants.
Enhancing public well being knowledge methods would assist the company extra successfully monitor all public well being threats, not simply COVID-19. If the efforts are profitable and correctly funded, they may additionally go away the US in a greater place for any future pandemics.
