Improving efficiency of COVID-19 aggregate case and death surveillance data transmission for jurisdictions: current and future role of application programming interfaces (APIs).

During the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) supplemented traditional COVID-19 case and death reporting with COVID-19 aggregate case and death surveillance (ACS) to track daily cumulative numbers. Later, as public health jurisdictions (PHJs) revised the historical COVID-19 case and death data due to data reconciliation and updates, CDC devised a manual process to update these records in the ACS dataset for improving the accuracy of COVID-19 case and death data. Automatic data transfer via an application programming interface (API), an intermediary that enables software applications to communicate, reduces the time and effort in transferring data from PHJs to CDC. However, APIs must meet specific content requirements for use by CDC. As of March 2022, CDC has integrated APIs from 3 jurisdictions for COVID-19 ACS. Expanded use of APIs may provide efficiencies for COVID-19 and other emergency response planning efforts as evidenced by this proof-of-concept. In this article, we share the utility of APIs in COVID-19 ACS.

Influenza and SARS-CoV-2 Co-infections in California, USA, September 2020-April 2021.

During September 1, 2020-April 30, 2021, the California Department of Public Health, Richmond, California, USA, received 255 positive influenza molecular test results that matched with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 molecular test results; 58 (23%) persons were co-infected. Influenza activity was minimal in California, and co-infections were sporadic.

Racial/Ethnic Disparities In COVID-19 Exposure Risk, Testing, And Cases At The Subcounty Level In California.

With a population of forty million and substantial geographic variation in sociodemographics and health services, California is an important setting in which to study disparities. Its population (37.5 percent White, 39.1 percent Latino, 5.3 percent Black, and 14.4 percent Asian) experienced 59,258 COVID-19 deaths through April 14, 2021-the most of any state. We analyzed California's racial/ethnic disparities in COVID-19 exposure risks, testing rates, test positivity, and case rates through October 2020, combining data from 15.4 million SARS-CoV-2 tests with subcounty exposure risk estimates from the American Community Survey. We defined "high-exposure-risk" households as those with one or more essential workers and fewer rooms than inhabitants. Latino people in California are 8.1 times more likely to live in high-exposure-risk households than White people (23.6 percent versus 2.9 percent), are overrepresented in cumulative cases (3,784 versus 1,112 per 100,000 people), and are underrepresented in cumulative testing (35,635 versus 48,930 per 100,000 people). These risks and outcomes were worse for Latino people than for members of other racial/ethnic minority groups. Subcounty disparity analyses can inform targeting of interventions and resources, including community-based testing and vaccine access measures. Tracking COVID-19 disparities and developing equity-focused public health programming that mitigates the effects of systemic racism can help improve health outcomes among California's populations of color.