The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's slow rollout of its findings have hampered the response to the Delta SARS-CoV-2 variant in the US, critics tell the Washington Post.
The agency, a CDC official tells it, behaves more like an academic institution, which limits its ability to quickly release data during an evolving pandemic. The Post writes that the agency's delay in providing data has led to "overly rosy assessments" of vaccine effectiveness and confusion when reports emerged from Israel, the UK, and Singapore beginning in May that vaccines appeared less effective against the Delta variant. It adds that the CDC published three studies this week with results similar to those of a previous Israeli study.
"The moment there's something really problematic, it should be shared," Scripps Research's Eric Topol tells the Post.
Kristen Nordlund, a CDC spokesperson, tells the Post that a balance must be struck between accuracy and speed and that the agency is making changes. According to the Post, the CDC is planning to establish a new disease forecasting and outbreak analytics.