Changing the data collection process at a time when cases are spiking could interfere with the analysis and slow governmental response, public health experts warn.
The Trump administration is rerouting hospital data on coronavirus patients to the Department of Health and Human Services, cutting the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention out of the process, according to a new data protocol posted on the HHS website.
The change began this week.
“We were surprised because the modules that we normally go to were empty. The data wasn’t available and not there,” Ryan Panchadsaram, who helps run a data-tracking site called Covid Exit Strategy, told CNBC. “There was no warning.”
Changing the data collection process at a time when cases are spiking could interfere with the analysis and slow governmental response, public health experts warn, and as President Donald Trump and his cabinet have been downplaying the spread of the pandemic, some worry that this new move will lead to scientific data being filtered through a political lens. The White House has effectively benched the CDC, with an HHS official last week accusing the agency of “undermining the president” for publishing a report outlining coronavirus risks to pregnant women.
RELATED: Trump Is Openly Attacking Fauci and the CDC Because They Are Worried About Worsening Outbreaks
“Historically, CDC has been the place where public health data has been sent, and this raises questions about not just access for researchers but access for reporters, access for the public to try to better understand what is happening with the outbreak,” Jen Kates, the director of global health and H.I.V. policy with the Kaiser Family Foundation, told the New York Times.
Dr. Nicole Lurie, who served as assistant secretary for preparedness and response under former President Barack Obama, called the data move to “an inherently political apparatus … dangerous and breeds distrust. It appears to cut off the ability of agencies like C.D.C. to do its basic job.”
Under the old reporting system, about 3,000 hospitals and health systems sent data about COVID-19 patients to the CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network. CDC staff would analyze the data and provide detailed reports with state governments twice weekly and to a number of federal agencies daily. These reports would be utilized by health officials and policymakers to identify and respond to coronavirus trends in their communities.
The new protocol will have healthcare institutions making daily reports to a federal contractor or to their state, which would coordinate the federal reporting. According to the HHS, the data will be used to determine decisions at the federal level, such as allocation of supplies, treatments, and other resources. The daily reports will be the only data used in distribution calculations of Remdesivir or any other treatments.
The Trump administration counseled hospitals to appoint someone to take charge of data collection and reports, and has asked governors to consider sending the National Guard into hospitals for that purpose. However, even HHS general counsel Robert P. Charrow questioned the efficacy of the plan.
“As a practical matter, I cannot imagine how the National Guard would be able to collect data at the hospital itself nor the number of Guards who would be exposed to COVID-19 in the process,” Charrow wrote in an email. “I believe that using National Guard troops to gather these data would be counter-productive.”
Either way, public health experts expressed concern over how swiftly this change happened.
Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, told CNBC: “What worries me is that we seem to be pushing rather suddenly in the midst of what feels like a very urgent time in terms of surging cases that we’re seeing across the country. The question is, what are we going to lose in this transition, and in particular at a moment where we really don’t want to lose any ability to understand what’s happening in hospitals.”
Emiene Wright Emiene Wright is associate editor at Cardinal & PIne. Before that she was on the 24-hour news desk of the Miami Herald and the Detroit Free Press, and her writing has been featured in Crisis, the Charlotte Observer, and Our State magazine.
