WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 (Xinhua) -- While more transmissible omicron variant continues to spread around the world, the United States is still struggling to gather accurate and timely domestic data to make informed decisions, U.S. media outlet Politico has reported.

People stand in a line at a COVID-19 testing site set up at the Miami Beach 17th street garage on December 22, 2021 in Miami Beach, Florida. (Photo: VCG)

"We're not tracking all the things that we need to to get a handle on what's going on. It is embarrassing," it said.

The report cited Biden health officials as saying that over the last eight months, due to a lack of accurate and timely domestic data, they have increasingly relied on international sources to respond to domestic surges in part because they believe the information is more reliable.

State and local public health departments and the U.S. Center for Disease Control tried hard to collect data and make informed decisions, but "outdated data systems that require significant manual data entry, slow laboratory reporting and a dwindling local public health workforce have hampered those efforts," the report said.