modernizing into systems that work together. The COVID-19 crisis simply exacerbated the weakness, says Wil, who normally works as a health scientist in CDC’s Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Laboratory Services (CSELS).Based on Kasey’s concept, Wil’s data management team continued ironing out misaligned data while building an algorithm that would take over most of that task.“It took six intensive weeks,” Wil says.While they coded, snags kept coming.
Some states, without notifying CDC, reformatted their state identification codes, triggering avalanches of duplicate COVID-19 cases in CDC’s system.“Suddenly, data submitted from one state showed 1,800 infants had died.