Florida data scientist Rebekah Jones turned herself into authorities Jan. 18 after a warrant was issued for her arrest in connection to her use of the state's computer system, the Washington Post reports. 

The effort to achieve mass vaccination in the U.S. has gotten off to a slower-than-predicted start, plagued by supply shortages, disorganization and inadequate IT systems.

Some North Carolina county health departments are having issues with reporting COVID-19 vaccine inoculations in the state's new data system, leaving them to receive fewer doses as more vaccines are allocated, Raleigh, N.C.-based WNCN News reports. 

Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Healthcare and Empiric Health received a patent for clinical analytics methodology.

Frederick County in Maryland surpassed its daily record for COVID-19 infections Jan. 12 following a 48-hour test processing data backlog the prior weekend at Frederick County Hospital, The Frederick News-Post reports.

HHS on Jan. 12 asked hospitals to begin reporting how many healthcare workers and patients they have administered COVID-19 vaccines to, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

Missouri's Jefferson County Health Department has not received the flu data it needs for its state reporting system since November, according to a Jan. 10 Leader report.

The Indiana Department of Health partnered with Zotec Partners to deploy a statewide COVID-19 vaccine information management system, the healthcare revenue cycle management company announced Jan. 11.

Centennial, Colo.-based Centura Health failed to report almost 2,500 COVID-19 hospitalizations dating back to last April because of a system coding issue, according to a Jan. 8 The Journal report. 

While the U.S. continues its widespread COVID-19 vaccination effort, there is still an urgent need to track virus transmission and strengthen national public health data systems to contain the spread, according to Louise Ivers, MD, and Wilfredo Matias, MD.

Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente's Vaccine Study Center is overseeing a national data effort focused on analyzing the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.

Nashville, Tenn.-based data analytics firm Change Healthcare will combine with UnitedHealth Group subsidiary Optum in a deal amounting to about $13 billion, Bloomberg reports. 

The holiday season has complicated COVID-19 data-gathering and reporting nationally, according to the White House COVID-19 task force.

The national COVID-19 surge has regionalized, and the holidays will cause reporting gaps and backlogs that are unlikely to stabilize until the second week of January at the earliest, according to The COVID Tracking Project.  

NBC News released a state-by-state COVID-19 vaccine tracker to calculate the number of doses administered across the U.S.

The COVID-19 positivity rates in Louisiana are skewed by labs and clinics not reporting all test results, according to a report in The Advocate.

Rebekah Jones, the data scientist who developed Florida's COVID-19 dashboard before being fired from the health department, has sued state officials who raided her home this month, saying the raid was in retaliation for criticizing Florida's governor, according to an NBC News report.

HHS began publishing daily data reports on the COVID-19 outbreak, including previously unpublished information about the virus' spread.

Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University created a COVID-19 vaccine data dashboard to track the administration of various vaccines across the U.S. by state.

While the frenzy to procure ventilators has subsided, and fatality rates in intensive care have decreased using basic treatments, it is still important to recognize the role of medical equipment in the pandemic response. Ventilators, infusion pumps, and patient monitors provide continue to be critical to the response. In general, imagine where healthcare systems would be without modern infusion pumps, anesthesia machines, MRI machines, x-ray systems, ultrasound machines, and patient monitors.