- Yet these counts only reflect what is reported by health authorities.
- The New York Times used a daily count in an online chart, yet also included a two-week trend in both cases and deaths.
- We don’t want people to eliminate mention of case counts.
- There are some in public health and journalism who believe the current surge — painful as it is — may augur good news.
Coronavirus case numbers and hospitalizations have been extensively used as barometers of the pandemic’s progress around the world for the past two years as reported by AP News.
Omicron wave
But the omicron wave is making a mess of the usual statistics, forcing news organizations to rethink the way they report such figures.
The number of case counts soared over the holidays, an expected development was given the emergence of a variant more transmissible than its predecessors.
Yet these counts only reflect what is reported by health authorities.
Holidays and weekends also lead to lags in reported cases.
If you could add all those numbers up — and you can’t — case counts would likely be substantially higher.
Case counts
For that reason, The Associated Press has recently told its editors and reporters to avoid emphasizing case counts in stories about the disease.
That means, for example, no more stories focused solely on a particular country or state setting a one-day record for a number of cases, because that claim has become unreliable.
Throughout the media, there has been more cautious in the use of official case counts.
A Tuesday story simply referred to a “tidal wave” of cases.
The New York Times used a daily count in an online chart, yet also included a two-week trend in both cases and deaths.
Breakdown of services
An AP story Saturday by Jennifer Sinco Kelleher and Terry Tang headlined, “Omicron explosion spurs nationwide breakdown of services” was full of statistics from across the United States on hospitalization rates or employees calling out sick from work.
“We definitely wanted people to go a little deeper and be more specific in reporting,” said Josh Hoffner, the news editor who helps oversee AP’s virus coverage.
Many news organizations are debating how best to use statistics now during the omicron surge, Wu said.
Hospitalization and death rates are considered by some to be a more reliable picture of COVID-19′s current impact on society.
Yet even the usefulness of those numbers has been called into question in recent days.
In many cases, hospitalizations are incidental: there are people being admitted for other reasons and are surprised to find they test positive for COVID, said Tanya Lewis, senior editor for health and medicine at Scientific American.
Public health
The numbers illustrate trends, giving a picture of which areas of the country are being hit particularly hard or where the surge may have peaked, he said.
That’s a point emphasized in AP’s internal guidance, as well.
There are some in public health and journalism who believe the current surge — painful as it is — may augur good news.
“We’ve been surprised time and again,” she said.
We don’t know everything about the course of the pandemic.
Did you subscribe to our newsletter?
It’s free! Click here to subscribe!
Source: AP News
