Public health experts are warning that coronavirus statistics will soon be newly vulnerable to political manipulation after the Trump administration ordered hospitals to send Covid-19 patient data directly to a Department of Health and Human Services system rather than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which usually receives the information and releases it to the public.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that the HHS database now positioned to collect daily Covid-19 information from hospitals “is not open to the public, which could affect the work of scores of researchers, modelers, and health officials who rely on CDC data to make projections and crucial decisions.”
“Centralizing control of all data under the umbrella of an inherently political apparatus is dangerous and breeds distrust.”
—Dr. Nicole Lurie
“Health and Human Services said that going forward, hospitals should report detailed information on a daily basis directly to the new centralized system, which is managed by TeleTracking, a health data firm with headquarters in Pittsburgh,” the Times noted.
The administration’s new directive came in the form of a document (pdf) quietly posted online last week by HHS, an agency headed by former pharmaceutical executive and Trump appointee Alex Azar.
“As of July 15, 2020, hospitals should no longer report the Covid-19 information in this document to the National Healthcare Safety Network site,” the directive states, referring to the CDC’s data-gathering system.
Dr. Nicole Lurie, who served in former President Barack Obama’s HHS, told the Times that “centralizing control of all data under the umbrella of an inherently political apparatus is dangerous and breeds distrust.”
“It appears to cut off the ability of agencies like CDC to do its basic job,” said Lurie.
HHS spokesperson Michael Caputo confirmed in a statement to NBC News that the CDC will “no longer control” coronavirus data collection but said the agency will still participate in the process.