Many Parts Of CDC's COVID Data Not Made Public: What To Know

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has not made all of its data on COVID-19 public due to fear of misinterpretation, the New York Times reports.

Some of the gathered data that has been withheld from the public are hospitalizations organized by race, age, and vaccination status. The CDC has also kept data regarding booster shot effectiveness for 18 to 49-year-olds private despite revealing information about its effectiveness in older adults earlier this month.

CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund explained to the outlet that the health agency’s “priority when gathering any data is to ensure that it’s accurate and actionable,” which could potentially delay some information from being released.

As we end the second year of the pandemic, some are concerned that the leading health agency in the country has revealed just a mere selection of its data regarding COVID-19. But releasing said information may not be so simple. The agency also has various bureaucratic divisions that need to sign off on major publications and announcements, such as the Department of Health and Human Services.

Samuel Scarpino, managing director of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute, told the NYTimes, "The CDC is a political organization as much as it is a public health organization,” adding, “The steps that it takes to get something like this released are often well outside of the control of many of the scientists that work at the CDC."