Four things to know:
1. Half of states are no longer providing daily pandemic data reports; some have dropped to reporting five days a week, and at least three states have slowed to reporting three times per week, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.
2. Florida and Alabama this week shifted their reporting to a once-a-week schedule, according to the June 9 report.
3. Researchers and epidemiologists told the Journal they are worried that lagging data will leave public health leaders with blind spots as new variants of the coronavirus continue to circulate and many other parts of the world are battling increasing cases.
4. For a diseases like COVID-19, real-time public health data ignites action in ways that weekly or monthly data reporting cannot, said Ajay Sethi, PhD, an associate professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, adding that “Real-time reporting will also help us to stay on top of new variants that are more infectious, or escape immunity afforded by the vaccines.”
