As the nation’s public health emergency expires on May 11, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will stop reporting its color-coded Covid-19 Community Levels as a way to track the spread of the infection.
Instead, the CDC will keep tabs on Covid-19 largely by tracking hospitalizations in some areas, according to a source familiar with the agency’s plans.
This is much the same way the agency tracks other respiratory infections, such as the flu.
Hospitalizations are a lagging indicator: it generally takes a person a week to 10 days to be hospitalized with a Covid-19 infection. So the switch may mean that the nation is losing its capacity for the earliest warning of an uptick in spread.
However, wastewater testing in communities and for air travelers will continue and is expected to close some of those early warning gaps.
“We’re not going to lose complete surveillance, but we will lose that hyperlocal sensitivity to it perhaps,” the source said.
The agency could announce the end of its community levels as early as next week, though the timing has not yet been finalized, the person said.