Investigative report: Inside America’s breakdown in reporting Covid cases

Inside America’s Covid-reporting breakdown Crashing computers, three-week delays tracking infections, lab results delivered by snail mail: State officials detail a vast failure to identify hotspots quickly enough to prevent outbreaks. Erin Banco POLITICO

... The CDC relies on states to identify and monitor viral outbreaks that, if uncontrolled, can kill thousands of people. But the coronavirus exposed a patchwork system in which state officials struggled to control the spread of Covid-19 because their outdated surveillance systems did not allow them to collect and analyze data in real-time, according to a six-month POLITICO investigation that included interviews with four dozen health officials in 25 states and more than a dozen current and former officials at the CDC and other federal health agencies.

Covid-19 revealed this cobbled-together system’s inability to accurately detect when and where the virus was spreading so public health officials could intervene. Those fissures now loom even larger as the Delta variant makes the quick identification of outbreaks and clusters even more crucial to containing the virus. ...