Tracking COVID-19: U.S. Public Health Surveillance and Data

"Public health surveillance, or ongoing data collection, is an essential part of public health practice. Particularly during a pandemic, timely data are important to understanding the epidemiology of a disease in order to craft policy and guide response decisionmaking. Many aspects of public health surveillance—such as which data are collectedand how—are often governed by law and policy at the state and subfederallevel, though informed by programs and expertise at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has exposed limitations and challenges with U.S. public health surveillance, including those related to the timeliness, completeness, and accuracy of data. This report provides an overview of U.S. public health surveillance, current COVID-19 surveillance and data collection, and selected policy issues that have been highlighted by the pandemic. Appendix B includes a compilation of selected COVID-19 data resources.

Current COVID-19 Surveillance and Data Collection
 

CDC’s COVID-19 surveillance involves numeroussurveillance systems that collect a variety of data, including on cases, testing positivity rates, hospitalizations, deaths, and emergency department visits. The multiple systems reflect an effort by CDC to strike a balance in surveillance—collecting different data types, with different measurement-related strengths and weaknesses that together can provide a picture of how the pandemic is affecting different populations in different locations. Other components of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other agencies also collect data to inform emergency response. 

Congress has taken severalrelated actions, including

 enacting a new authority in the CARES Act (P.L. 116-136, §18115) authorizing the HHS Secretary to impose data reporting requirements on clinical laboratories during the public health emergency;
 
 appropriating funding for grants to jurisdictions and tribal entities that can be used for surveillance;

 appropriating $500 million in the CARES Act (P.L. 116-136) for public health data modernization; and

 enacting several provisionsin the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act (PPPHCEA; P.L. 116-139) requiring regular reports on COVID-19 data and epidemiology submitted from CDC to Congress..."
Tracking COVID-19 and public health