Starting Oct. 20, the CDC will publish data on COVID-19 cases and deaths every Wednesday. It had been updating the figures on a daily basis since the start of the pandemic.
"To allow for additional reporting flexibility, reduce the reporting burden on states and jurisdictions, and maximize surveillance resources, CDC is moving to a weekly reporting cadence," the agency said in an Oct. 5 update.
Earlier this week, the agency dropped its country-by-country travel advisories. The data reporting and guidance wind downs come amid falling U.S. cases and hospitalizations. The daily average for cases on Oct. 5 was 43,149, down 23 percent from two weeks ago, according to HHS data compiled by The New York Times. Hospitalizations were also down about 11 percent.
Experts, however, say there are growing signs that a fall surge is looming.
"We should anticipate that we very well may get another variant that would emerge that would elude the immune response that we've gotten from infection and/or from vaccination," Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an Oct. 4 interview with the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism.