The Census Bureau has decided to reduce by one month the amount of time it will spend knocking on doors across the country, reports NPR.
In April, the agency indicated that it would take until Halloween to accurately count all people in the country due to delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Now, the effort to knock on doors will stop on September 30, three employees of the Census Bureau told the radio station. The office website does not yet reflect the change.
“It will be impossible to complete the count on time,” one of the office employees told NPR. “I am very afraid that we will have a massive count.”
The office still uses door knocks to get more accurate counts from communities where there has been little response to the census. Office employees began knocking on doors in early July in the least-reported communities, and the effort is expected to expand across the country on August 11, according to NPR.
Approximately 40 percent of households in the US have not yet participated in the constitutionally mandated 10-year account.
When asked by the NPR about the early termination of knocking on the door, the Census Bureau said in a statement: “We are currently evaluating our operations to allow the Census Bureau to provide this data in the fastest manner and when those plans have been finalized, will make an announcement. “
Families can still go to the Census Bureau website to answer for themselves, although it is unclear how much longer they will be able to do so. According to NPR, the office site had said July 31 was the last day of the “self-response phase,” but now says the phase will run until the end of the field data collection.
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