Political | Process

After CDC resolved the error, the pediatric death figure reported on its COVID Data Tracker dropped to 1,339 all-time deaths, a reduction of 23.7% from the figure reported the day prior.

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• “On March 15, 2022, data on deaths were adjusted after resolving a coding logic error. This resulted in decreased death counts across all demographic categories,” the data tracker said.

• The CDC did not return multiple requests for comment.

• Prior to the fix, the CDC’s data had been used as the basis for articles published late last week by the Guardian and the New York Post that reported as many as a third of all child deaths from COVID-19 had occurred since the beginning of 2022 amid the omicron surge.

• “Children seem to be facing increasing risks as mask mandates are abandoned and vaccination rates stall,” the Guardian reported.

• The article received a substantial amendment late Thursday after the reporter behind the piece deleted multiple tweets citing the CDC.

• The article now cites data from the CDC’s weekly provisional data on COVID-19 deaths, which is based on death certificate data and states that 921 children ages 0 to 17 had deaths “involving COVID-19” since the start of the pandemic, a figure significantly smaller than the figure reported by the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker.

• The CDC came under fire for its lack of transparency surrounding COVID-19 data in late February after the New York Times reported that the agency had published only a small portion of the data it had collected on hospitalizations, vaccines, and wastewater analysis in part because it feared the information might have been misinterpreted by the public.

• Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, railed against the CDC in a March 1 letter for its “disturbing and shameful” lack of transparency surrounding COVID-19 data.

• “In the midst of a pandemic, it is unacceptable that CDC would withhold relevant data on COVID-19 that could inform the public and potentially save lives,” Johnson wrote to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.