It’s been almost a year since the Vermont Department of Health began publishing weekly Covid-19 surveillance updates after retiring its more detailed, daily Covid data dashboard.
At the time, officials cited the changing nature of Covid testing and the transition to an “endemic” phase of the virus as reasons for the switch. The surveillance reports included information about weekly cases, hospital admissions, deaths and wastewater sampling, but lacked the granular details of demographics and county-level data the department once provided.
Vermont’s Covid levels have mostly remained “low” throughout the past year, although the state reported brief surges in early fall and after the December holidays. In the meantime, the department rolled back its data reporting even further.
A few months ago, the department stopped updating datasets that showed the underlying number of cases and hospitalizations summarized in its weekly updates. A few weeks ago, it announced it would shut down its vaccination dashboard for the summer as it plans for a combined Covid and flu dashboard later this year.
The department stopped reporting Burlington wastewater sampling data after the city stopped publishing it on its website in April, instead sending it directly to the CDC.
Other major institutions have halted their data collection processes, too. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to stop publishing Covid community levels by county because the end of the national public health emergency on May 11 will end federal requirements for laboratories to submit test results to the CDC.
In light of all these changes, VTDigger has decided to change the way it reports on Covid, too. Starting this week, we will no longer publish weekly Covid updates based on state and federal data.
This does not mean we’re planning to stop covering Covid. Rather, we want to make sure our reporting resources are focused on bigger stories and broader trends — not incremental reports on data that has grown increasingly incomplete. We’ll continue monitoring all the information the health department publishes and we’ll be prepared to report on any signs of a Covid surge.
We will also continue updating the VTDigger Covid-19 data dashboard, which contains the same charts and information as the weekly updates. The chart of CDC county-by-county Covid levels will be removed when the CDC stops updating that data, but for now the weekly cases, hospital admissions and monthly death charts will remain current. The health department also plans to continue reporting statewide Covid community levels, so we’ll report that, too.
Our Covid-19 Roundup newsletter, which has been hitting inboxes on Thursday afternoons, will change, too. Now, our readers will receive the Covid-19 Updates newsletter as new coronavirus stories break, instead of on a weekly basis.
We plan to continue our reporting on Covid with substantive, data- and science-driven looks at how the pandemic continues to affect Vermonters. We hope to keep our readers well-informed about the statewide picture of Covid — and Vermont’s overall health, too.
Now, on to the latest update.
Vermont had “low” Covid-19 community levels in the past week, the health department reported Wednesday.
The department reported a slight increase in the number of hospital admissions for the disease: 13, compared with 10 the week before. That’s still far below the more than 40 per week reported at the beginning of 2023.
There were 93 Covid cases reported, compared with 116 the week before, according to the department. Covid case data is primarily based on PCR tests and does not include at-home antigen testing.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 14 Vermont counties had “low” Covid community levels, based on a combination of case rates, hospital admissions and the percent of hospital beds taken up by Covid patients.
The CDC does not recommend that people in low-level counties take precautions to prevent transmission such as masking or social distancing. However, it does recommend that everyone follow universal precautions such as getting vaccinated, avoiding exposure to people with Covid and isolating if they have Covid.
The health department reported five additional deaths from Covid this week, bringing April’s total up to 18 deaths and May’s to three deaths. In total, 967 people have died of the virus since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the department.
