A year into the pandemic of coronavirus in the United States, we still do not have a complete understanding of who gets sick, and where, and when. Demographic data from many states is surprisingly incomplete, and even widely collected information, such as the age of a patient at the time of diagnosis or death, is presented so inconsistently that it is misrepresented. being impossible to gather into a clear national picture. The federal government is now making more demographic data, but the information continues to emerge at a snail’s pace.
This has led to outsiders trying to collect the data – organizations such as the COVID Management Project, based at The West Bay. For more than nine months, we have compiled data from states to create a complex national picture of pandemic. Time and time again, we have seen a lack of federal support for state public health authorities that have placed too much responsibility for self-care, leading to incomplete reporting, inappropriate data explanations, and pipelines. inconsistent data.
With vaccine data, the United States has an opportunity to regenerate. The national vaccination effort itself is inconsistent and inconsistent, driven by state and county policies without a complete federal support system – but the data on vaccines need not reflect this inconsistency. Monitoring the distribution of vaccines and the speed of vaccination will provide a meaningful overview of the number of future cases, hospitals and deaths. And especially with the well-established racial and ethnic differences we see in COVID-19 cases and deaths, we need to have access to data that would reveal whether these inequalities have been addressed. treated – or strengthened – by our national vaccination effort.
As the CDC states, “A robust, nationally co-ordinated approach is essential to the collection, tracking and analysis of vaccine data, particularly in the early stages of vaccine administration. “The organization needs regular and timely reporting of complete demographic data on all vaccines. But almost a month after the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were given in the U.S., we have little public information about who is receiving the vaccine. The CDC publishes data on vaccine distribution and administered first doses – which is a good place to start – but has not yet released any demographic data.
The vaccine data published by individual states reproduces the mosaic nature of the other COVID-19 data at the state level that our teams have been compiling since March. Our researchers have found 17 states currently reporting some data on the race and ethnicity of people receiving vaccines. Like other demographic information on COVID-19, in the absence of public reporting standards, states have chosen to report data in different ways. Several states combine respondents who claim to be heterosexual and “other”; Massachusetts combines four divisions into one; Mississippi identifies respondents only as Black, white, or Asian; Oregon reports people in every region they choose, meaning vaccine recipients who identify themselves in more than one region are counted more than once. These inconsistencies make proper comparisons among states – or any national understanding of the vaccine campaign – impossible.
In the absence of complete federal public health data or uniform standards for state-of-the-art reporting, we will continue to have an incomplete and incomprehensible understanding of the Americans receiving the vaccine, and where, and when. Without this information, it will be impossible to say whether vaccination efforts across the country are meeting their stated goals – and it will be impossible. Too much non-government effort cannot correct this problem. Federal public health bodies must publish all personally identifiable vaccine data – not in two or three or six months, but now.
Charlotte Minsky and Kara Schechtman of the COVID Management Project contributed to research and reporting.
A year into the pandemic of coronavirus in the United States, we still do not have a complete understanding of who gets sick, and where, and when. Demographic data from many states is surprisingly incomplete, and even widely collected information, such as the age of a patient at the time of diagnosis or death, is presented so inconsistently that it is misrepresented. being impossible to gather into a clear national picture. The federal government is now making more demographic data, but the information continues to emerge at a snail’s pace.
This has led to outsiders trying to collect the data – organizations such as the COVID Management Project, based at The West Bay. For more than nine months, we have compiled data from states to create a complex national picture of pandemic. Time and time again, we have seen a lack of federal support for state public health authorities that have placed too much responsibility for self-care, leading to incomplete reporting, inappropriate data explanations, and pipelines. inconsistent data.
With vaccine data, the United States has an opportunity to regenerate. The national vaccination effort itself is inconsistent and inconsistent, driven by state and county policies without a complete federal support system – but the data on vaccines need not reflect this inconsistency. Monitoring the distribution of vaccines and the speed of vaccination will provide a meaningful overview of the number of future cases, hospitals and deaths. And especially with the well-established racial and ethnic differences we see in COVID-19 cases and deaths, we need to have access to data that would reveal whether these inequalities have been addressed. treated – or strengthened – by our national vaccination effort.
As the CDC states, “A robust, nationally co-ordinated approach is essential to the collection, tracking and analysis of vaccine data, particularly in the early stages of vaccine administration. “The organization needs regular and timely reporting of complete demographic data on all vaccines. But almost a month after the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were given in the U.S., we have little public information about who is receiving the vaccine. The CDC publishes data on vaccine distribution and administered first doses – which is a good place to start – but has not yet released any demographic data.
The vaccine data published by individual states reproduces the mosaic nature of the other state-level COVID-19 data that our teams have been compiling since March. Our researchers have found 17 states currently reporting some data on the race and ethnicity of people receiving vaccines. Like other demographic information on COVID-19, in the absence of public reporting standards, states have chosen to report data in different ways. Several states combine respondents who claim to be heterosexual and “other”; Massachusetts combines four divisions into one; Mississippi identifies respondents only as Black, white, or Asian; Oregon reports people in every region they choose, meaning vaccine recipients who identify themselves in more than one region are counted more than once. These inconsistencies make proper comparisons among states – or any national understanding of the vaccine campaign – impossible.
In the absence of complete federal public health data or uniform standards for state-of-the-art reporting, we will continue to have an incomplete and incomprehensible understanding of the Americans receiving the vaccine, and where, and when. Without this information, it will be impossible to say whether vaccination efforts across the country are meeting their stated goals – and it will be impossible. Too much non-government effort cannot correct this problem. Federal public health bodies must publish all non-personally identifiable vaccine data – not in two or three or six months, but now.
Charlotte Minsky and Kara Schechtman of the COVID Management Project contributed to research and reporting.
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