US could miss signs of new COVID-19 surge due to drop in data reporting frequency: NYT

NEW YORK - The United States could miss the signs of a new COVID-19 surge in the country due to drop in data reporting frequency in many states, The New York Times said in a recent report.

"A growing number of US states have stopped giving daily updates of the number of new coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths, which, combined with the rise of at-home testing whose results are often not officially registered, is creating a more uneven real-time look at the state of the pandemic," said the report published Saturday.

The report cited the drop in Arizona, Hawaii, Kentucky, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, the District of Columbia and Wyoming as examples, noting that the frequency in those states has been reduced from daily reports to weekly, or twice-a-week reports.

Scientists and health experts believe that more reductions in reporting will come in the future, and fear that those reductions "could create blind spots if the pandemic begins a resurgence," the report added.

The United States has so far reported more than 79 million COVID-19 infections and over 972,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Recently, infections of the new Omicron subvariant, known as BA.2, have been doubling each week, data of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed.

The fast spreading of the subvariant has raised concerns among experts that the United States may see another rise in COVID-19 cases in the next few weeks.