The US health authority CDC is increasingly under criticism. She is said to have withheld corona data, for example about booster vaccinations.
Druid Hills – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been collecting data on hospital admissions related to Covid-19 in the United States for more than a year. These are then broken down by age, ethnicity and vaccination status. Among other things, the authority of the US Department of Health deals with infectious diseases, health promotion and health education and is therefore similar to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) in Germany.
Now the health authority in the USA is under criticism. She is said to have withheld much of the corona information collected.
Corona pandemic: Vaccination data on large population groups in the USA is missing
As reported by the New York Times, the CDC published the first significant data on the effectiveness of booster vaccinations around two weeks ago. However, only the results for adults under the age of 65 were announced. Data for the 18 to 49 age group were omitted.
In Germany, the fourth corona vaccination has now been recommended by the Standing Vaccination Commission (Stiko) for particularly vulnerable groups. According to Franz-Xaver Reichl, representative for the biological safety of bacteria and viruses at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), the second booster vaccination is particularly important for older people and high-risk patients. “It’s very different for younger people. (…) The younger ones have antibody protection for much longer,” said Reichl in an interview with the Ippen central editorial office. According to the professor, a fourth dose is not yet necessary for people between the ages of 18 and 50.
The corresponding data basis for these age groups is missing in the USA. According to the New York Times, external experts had to rely on the data in Israel to make recommendations for the booster vaccination.
| Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) | |
|---|---|
| founding | 1992 |
| Seat | Druid Hills, Georgia (USA) |
| management | Rochelle Walensky |
CDC in the US: Corona data withheld for fear of misinterpretation
But not only this data is said to have been withheld, as research by the New York Times revealed. The CDC recently posted a dashboard of wastewater data on its website that provides an overview of the US’s coronavirus burden. This should make it possible to forecast an impending wave of infection. Sewage information that some states and localities had submitted to the CDC since the pandemic began was released with a delay, The Daily Beast reported.
Much of the withheld information could help state and local health officials fight to contain the pandemic, for example by identifying high-risk populations. Kristen Nordlund, spokeswoman for the CDC, commented on the slow release of the data to the New York Times. First, it must be ensured that the data is “accurate and usable”. Fear that the data could be misinterpreted also played a role, says Nordlund.
In addition, bureaucratic hurdles could also speak for the missing data. “The steps required to declassify something like this are often beyond the control of many of the scientists who work at the CDC,” said Samuel Scarpino, director of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Institute for Pandemic Prevention New York Times quoted.
Corona pandemic in the USA: data systems are outdated
Daniel Jernigan, deputy director of CDC’s Public Health Science and Surveillance Agency, told the newspaper that the coronavirus pandemic has revealed that CDC’s systems are outdated and not capable of handling large amounts of data. “We want better, faster data that can guide decision making and action at all levels of healthcare and help us close the data backlog that has been holding us back,” said Jernigan of the project modernize systems.
In the past year, the health authority has repeatedly come under criticism for not recording so-called vaccination breakthroughs. Instead, the CDC is said to have only focused on people who were hospitalized or died in connection with Covid-19.
For more than a year, the CDC has collected data on hospitalizations for Covid-19 in the United States and broken it down by age, race and vaccination status. But it has not made most of the information public,” the NYT’s @apoorva_nyc https://t.co/TNmPPHiYvG
— Shashi Bellamkonda+ (@shashib) February 21, 2022
Corona in the USA: Expert criticizes health authorities
“We’ve been begging for this kind of detailed data for two years,” the New York Times quoted epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera as saying. “A detailed analysis builds public confidence and paints a much clearer picture of what is actually going on.” Concerns about possible misinterpretation are not acceptable reasons for withholding information. “There is a much greater risk of misinterpreting the data when we have gaps in the data than sharing the data with proper scholarship, communication, and caveats,” Rivera said.
According to the New York Times, Paul Offit, a vaccine expert and advisor to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), also called for the missing data to be released. “I have to believe that there is a way to explain these things in a way that people can understand.” The CDC now has more than a billion US dollars to speed up the speed of data transmission and modernize the systems obtain. “We’re working on it,” spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said.
Meanwhile, the FDA is examining whether there should be a fourth corona vaccination for US citizens. This could be the start of annual refreshers. (cheese)
