D.C. councilmembers are calling on the city’s health director, LaQuandra Nesbitt, to investigate how two weeks of COVID data went unreported to the Centers for Disease Control.

In a letter sent Thursday evening, Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau, joined by five of her council colleagues, called for an investigation to be completed and presented to the councilmembers.

“As residents continue to fall ill and suffer from Long COVID, we hope we can agree that they should have confidence in our data tracking and the tools they need to keep themselves safe,” reads the letter, signed by Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh, Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White, At-Large Councilmember Robert White, Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George, and Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen.

On Wednesday, DC Health announced that between April 27 and May 8, the city had not shared its COVID case data with the CDC, but failed to provide an explanation for the error. When the Washington Post first inquired about the missing data earlier this week, a spokesperson for D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office said they were “looking into” the error.

In addition to the city’s own coronavirus tracking website — which now shows weekly trends in case rates, rather than specific daily case numbers — D.C. sends infection, testing, and death data on a fairly regular basis to the CDC, which then publishes the information in charts that track increases over a seven-day period. The District is in line with nearly all other states in foregoing daily infection reporting and instead charting trends in spread over time — but the inexplicable gap in data left some residents temporarily in the dark about how to best assess their risk.

“Immunocompromised people and parents with children under five who cannot be vaccinated especially need the most up-to-date data to make the best decisions for themselves and their families, and we must commit to timely making that information public,” reads the letter.

Spokespeople for DC Health did not immediately return DCist/WAMU’s request for comment on Friday.

Nadeau’s letter also calls for several improvements in D.C.’s current COVID data collection and publication — namely, restoring outbreak information to the city’s COVID website; updating the COVID website every Monday by 4 p.m., instead of Wednesday at 6 p.m; and establishing a plan to survey wastewater. According to the letter, DC Health is allowing its contract with a private company hired to complete the wastewater surveillance to lapse without another plan in place.

In March 2022, DC Health told Axios DC that wastewater surveillance was set to begin in April, so long as they received long-delayed equipment. In a statement on Thursday, DC Health told DCist/WAMU that “the wastewater project is continuing to move forward, and we are working on getting the program up and running as soon as possible but do not have a specific launch date available yet.” DC Health did not immediately answer DCist/WAMU’s questions about why the contract with the current company was lapsing, or if a new contract has been signed with a different company.

Wastewater is an especially helpful tool in assessing the spread of COVID in a community, especially as more residents rely on at-home antigen tests that go unreported. Wastewater data can often predict spikes early, and identify new strains of the virus.

This week’s data debacle comes as cases tick up slightly around the D.C. region. While D.C.’s COVID dashboard puts the city in the “low” bar of spread, there’s a lag in reporting. In neighboring Northern Virginia, all jurisdictions have moved into the “medium” zone in recent weeks, as has Montgomery County. Hospitalizations and deaths, however, remain low.

Previously:

D.C. Hasn’t Explained Why COVID Data Wasn’t Sent To The CDC For Two Weeks