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COVID-19: Self-Checker, Data Reporting FAQs

Health systems and health departments now can add the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) online, mobile-friendly Coronavirus Self-Checker to their own website.

The interactive tool helps individuals discover where to get tested for COVID-19 and what actions someone should take based on their symptoms, exposure, underlying health conditions, and risk. Health systems and health departments can embed the tool or customize it to meet their own needs.

HHS Updates Data Reporting FAQs

The Department of Health and Human Services on July 29 updated its COVID-19 guidance for hospital reporting and FAQs. The revised document:

  • includes links to the templates to upload capacity and utilization data;
  • modifies supply reporting to be three days a week instead of daily; and
  • changes the days-on-hand reporting to a range instead of a single value.

CDC Issues Interim Guidance for Pooling Procedures

The CDC issued interim guidance for pooling procedures in SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic, screening, and surveillance testing. Pooling combines respiratory samples from several people to conduct one laboratory test; if the pooled test result is positive, each sample must be tested individually.

The agency recommends pooling be used only in areas or situations with an anticipated low number of positive test results. CDC urges laboratories to determine prevalence based on a rolling average of the positivity rate of their own SARS-CoV-2 testing over the previous 7–10 days and to develop a methodology to assess the sensitivity of the assay they are using and their costs of testing to justify the use of a pooling strategy.

COVID-19 Outbreak at Georgia Summer Camp

In this week’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, CDC reports on SARS-CoV-2 transmission among attendees at a Georgia overnight camp in June 2020. The camp required all trainees, staff members, and campers to provide documentation of a negative viral SARS-CoV-2 test fewer than 12 days before arriving, and officials adopted most components of CDC’s Suggestions for Youth and Summer Camps.

However, the virus spread efficiently, resulting in high attack rates among persons in all age groups and an overall attack rate of 44 percent (260 of 597). Notably, camp officials required staff, but not campers, to wear cloth masks; large cohorts slept in cabins together; and campers sang and cheered regularly, likely contributing to transmission.

Visit the America’s Essential Hospitals coronavirus resource page for more information about the outbreak.

Contact Senior Director of Policy Erin O’Malley at eomalley@essentialhospitals.org or 202.585.0127 with questions.

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About the Author

Emily Schweich is a communications manager at America's Essential Hospitals.

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