The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will stop reporting daily COVID-19 cases later this month and switch to weekly reports after more than two years of near constant daily updates.
In an update regarding its coronavirus data and surveillance, the CDC said it was transitioning from daily to weekly reports to allow for more “flexibility” and to reduce the burden on state and local governments. The change in case reporting will take place on Oct. 20.
“Data processing cutoffs for jurisdictions will be every Wednesday at 10AM ET for line level case and death data, and Wednesday at 5PM ET for aggregate case and death data,” the CDC stated.
This move to weekly reports could be similar to how the CDC covers the annual flu season. The agency typically updates its influenza data on a weekly basis, with reports containing compiled data on one site as opposed to the COVID-19 dashboard that is currently being used.
This is the latest in a series of recent developments where the federal government has pulled back on the amount of resources and scrutiny being used in the pandemic.
The Biden administration ended the requirement for international travelers coming into the U.S. to provide a negative COVID-19 test in June.
In late August, the White House said it expected to shift COVID-19 vaccine distribution to the private market early next year. The federal government also stopped offering free at-home COVID-19 tests through the mail that same month.
This decision comes as further pandemic funding has stalled in Congress. The administration had included a request for billions more in funding for both the COVID-19 pandemic and the monkeypox outbreak in the stopgap spending bill last month, but the request was ultimately dropped a few days before the deadline.