The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Team of scientists aiming to provide better, faster info
A new team of federal health scientists officially embarked Tuesday on a mission to provide what has often been absent from the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic: better, faster information about what’s likely to happen next in this public health emergency and future outbreaks.
“We think of ourselves like the National Weather Service, but for infectious diseases,” said Caitlin Rivers, associate director for science at the initiative, run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 100 scientists will analyze technical data and communicate policy options to decision-makers and the public about how the virus is behaving and who is most at risk — in user-friendly terms.
“We would love to be able for people to look to us to say, ‘I’m about to commute on the Red Line . ... Should I bring a mask based on what’s happening with respiratory disease in my community? Should I have my birthday party outside or inside?’ Those kinds of decisions, I think, are where we would like to move toward,” Rivers said.
The Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, which starts
with $200 million in funding, was created last summer to improve understanding by the CDC and the government more broadly of the coronavirus — and future outbreaks — in real time. White House officials planned to formally launch the effort Tuesday at a summit on strengthening U.S. early-warning systems for health threats.
The center comes into existence at an uncertain moment in the pandemic. As the United States plods wearily into the third year of the health crisis, COVID-19 cases are rising. But it remains unclear whether new, highly transmissible versions of the omicron variant in New York state and Europe will trigger a new wave of infections.
If there is another surge, elected leaders could be wary of reinstituting restrictions such as mask mandates, given the availability of vaccines and therapeutics and a political environment in which many Americans express ambivalence, or even outright hostility, toward vaccines and recommendations.
There is no national system in for infectious-disease forecasting. The center will be based in D.C. and will eventually have about 100 staff members, including some at the CDC’S Atlanta headquarters.
It will report to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.