The CDC has done a dismal job of data collection throughout the pandemic. Eric Topol has been very loudly and publicly calling out the CDC for there horrible work on data collection for months now. Data on hospital populations has been the worst end of it. We do not have good data on who is vaccinated and who is not among COVID patients and who has what variant. We also do not have good data on hospital admissions due to COVID versus people who test positive in the hospital but had no COVID systems. This is primarily because the Biden admin have been a bunch of pussies and do not want to have any big conflicts with the southern governors over COVID policies. Forcing states to comply with uniform COVID reporting standards would get Abbott and DeSantis on FoxNews and OANN every night complaining about the jack booted thugs at the CDC. So, Biden admin has forced the CDC to just do the best they can with whatever the states are providing in terms of COVID data.
It does need to change because data is critical to making decisions about vaccinations and boosters. It is also important to have good data to be able to anticipate surges in demand for healthcare, PPPs, tests and treatments. And invariably, good timely data could mean the difference between allowing another more virulent variant to get out of a local outbreak and become another nightmare wave of hospitalizations and deaths.