How the US reports COVID data is about to change. Here's what you need to know.

In another landmark change to how the nation tracks COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will halt efforts to count daily cases and instead shift surveillance to hospitalizations or death, similar to tracking the flu.

Daily reporting of COVID-19 cases is ending as the public health emergency concludes May 11 and the U.S. shifts to weekly surveillance of deaths and hospitalizations. Another change: The color-coded community maps showing cases by county will be replaced by another measure based on hospital admissions.

The news comes as the World Health Organization said Friday that COVID-19 is no longer a global emergency even though the pandemic has not ended.

CDC officials described the reporting changes as a better fit for the current phase of COVID-19. Officials emphasized the new method of tracking the virus − including hospitalizations, wastewater analysis and genomic surveillance − will provide actionable information for national and local health officials and the public to track virus trends.

The latest data shows more than 1,000 Americans are dying from COVID every week, far below the peak in January 2021 when more than 23,000 people died in a week.

"COVID-19 remains a risk and CDC remains committed to preventing severe illness and deaths associated with COVID-19, particularly for those who are at higher risk," said Dr. Nirav Shah, the CDC’s principal deputy director.

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Here's what we know.

Why is the CDC's COVID data changing?

The public health emergency ends May 11, and the CDC will no longer have the legal authority to require all labs to report coronavirus testing results. Some states also will lose their legal authority to collect such case data, said Dr. Brendan Jackson, lead of the CDC’s COVID-19 response.

"It is very much a state-by-state situation," Jackson said.

Officials said cases have become harder to track as home testing has become so prolific. People with mild or asymptomatic cases who use rapid COVID-19 home tests often don't report results to their doctor or local public health department. That means public officials don't have accurate case counts.

Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, said monitoring the virus like the flu or other respiratory viruses are tracked makes more sense for states.

"We will have some sense of direction" with the flu-like surveillance model, Plescia said. "It's just not going to be that we're trying to capture every case, which we haven't really been doing successfully for quite some time."

Early in the pandemic, public health officials were hopeful the virus could be slowed through contacting and isolating people with COVID-19 and informing others who may have been exposed. But the virus spread too rapidly for such contact tracing to be effective.

How COVID data will now be tracked

• Hospitals. They must report the number of COVID-19-positive patients who visit emergency rooms or are admitted to the facility.

• Wastewater monitoring. The CDC will track the virus in hundreds of communities representing nearly 140 million residents. The CDC has sought to bolster capacity with state and local health departments to monitor infectious disease trends through wastewater samples, Shah said.

• Labs. The agency will rely on voluntary reporting from a network of more than 450 labs nationwide that track respiratory viruses. These labs will track the COVID-19 positivity rates − a measure of how often tests are positive, which is considered a key indicator of the virus' reach in a community.

Where to find the new COVID data tracker

The public will be able to view the new COVID-19 data tracker and see levels of hospitalization and death in their community. Those figures will be updated weekly at data.cdc.gov.

The CDC will change how it collects death data, switching from current systems to one that relies on provisional death certificate data. Officials said data is updated when a local public health jurisdiction reports deaths. The new system will more accurately reflect when deaths occur, officials said.

Jackson said the data tracker will include other metrics such as wastewater trends and emergency department visits, which will provide earlier signals to changes in COVID-19 activity. People can also see a national figure for a percentage of COVID-19 tests that are positive, but Jackson said it will be a couple of weeks before that appears.

He added that genomic surveillance will inform public health about whether new coronavirus variants are spreading. Vaccination data will be reported by local public health entities that sign data-use agreements. The CDC will no longer get this data beyond May 11 from jurisdictions that don't sign such agreements. The CDC also will report data through national vaccine surveys.

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Without daily case reports, how will the CDC know when the virus is getting worse?

Shah said there will still be various data points to track and inform the public about virus activity.

The network of public health laboratories will test for the virus similar to how it tracks influenza, RSV and other respiratory viruses. Emergency department visits and hospital admissions also will inform public health of virus trends.

While the CDC now characterizes COVID-19 risk as low in nearly all communities nationwide, Jackson said the new tracking system that relies heavily on hospital data will inform public health when circumstances change. If COVID-19 hospitalizations spike, for example, public health officials might recommend masking. Hospitals and other medical offices also should recommend masking if the virus spikes in a community or if the virus spreads within a facility.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: CDC changes COVID data tracking to focus on deaths, severe cases