COVID-19 Pandemic-Related Impacts on Newborn Screening Public Health Surveillance

Abstract

Newborn screening (NBS) is an essential public health service that performs screening to identify those newborns at increased risk for a panel of disorders, most of which are genetic. The goal of screening is to link those newborns at the highest risk to timely intervention and potentially life-saving treatment. The global COVID-19 pandemic led to disruptions within the United States public health system, revealing implications for the continuity of newborn screening laboratories and follow-up operations. The impacts of COVID-19 across different states at various time points meant that NBS programs impacted by the pandemic later could benefit from the immediate experiences of the earlier impacted programs. This article will review the collection, analysis, and dissemination of information during the COVID-19 pandemic facilitated by a national, centralized technical assistance and resource center for NBS programs.

Keywords

• newborn screening
• COVID-19
• public health
• NewSTEPs