“The U.S. needs to rethink its approach to tackling Covid-19 by rebuilding the nation’s public health system, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said in an interview with POLITICO.”
“It’s been a year since Walensky took over the public health agency and the country has gone through a vaccine rollout, seen variants emerge and witnessed three massive surges. To Walensky, the pandemic shows no signs of vanishing. This week, an average of 740,000 infections were reported each day. On Thursday, the day she spoke with POLITICO, more than 2,400 people were reported as having died from Covid-19.”
“Now, as the pandemic enters the third year, she said the CDC needs help to fight Covid-19. If the pandemic is to turn endemic — a situation top Biden health officials say they could more easily control — the U.S. needs to overhaul the nation’s public health workforce, she said…”
“Over the past two years, state public health offices have worked to build data teams, specifically. When the pandemic began, health offices were inundated with new lab reports and cases to track. The volume of results that flowed into the public health offices overwhelmed even the biggest and most well-funded teams. As a result, states failed to accurately detect and contain Covid-19, ending contact-tracing efforts before the end of the first year.”
“In recent months, the CDC has come under fire from lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and within the administration, for its data, primarily the gaps that still exist two years into the pandemic. The agency has struggled to report accurate vaccination, hospitalization and case information due in part to delayed reporting from overburdened state health agencies. In a Senate HELP Committee hearing last week, Walensky said the agency was six weeks behind in compiling and analyzing state Covid-19 data.”
“’Historically, the CDC has this reputation of making sure every every I is dotted, every T is crossed before a decision is made — that the data has to be perfect before they’re able to get it out. We don’t have that luxury in this pandemic,’ Walensky said. ‘And when you wait for those perfect data to make a decision, it’s too late. We need to sometimes make decisions in the context of areas where the science is gray.'”
“Walensky said the CDC has made some improvements to its data-collection methods, including setting up a more accurate and sustainable system to obtain hospital information. But, she plans to put the agency’s data modernization effort front and center in the coming year…” Read the full article here.
Source: ‘The CDC alone can’t fix this’: Walensky calls for overhaul of U.S. public health system – By Erin Banco, January 21, 2022. POLITICO.
