U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar speaks after a White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing at the Department of Health and Human Services on June 26, 2020 in Washington, DC.
Joshua Roberts | Getty Images
The Trump administration unveiled a new website of Covid-19 hospitalization data that officials said offers a more complete picture of the outbreak than the data previously compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The administration instructed hospitals last week to stop reporting to the CDC’s long-standing National Healthcare Safety Network, which provides officials “with data needed to identify problem areas, measure progress of prevention efforts, and ultimately eliminate healthcare-associated infections.” Instead, hospitals were instructed to report such data through a new portal with HHS.
Officials said the decision was made to streamline data reporting and to provide HHS officials with real-time data used to make decisions such as how to distribute the country’s scarce supply of Covid-19 treatment remdesivir. Public health specialists and former health officials who spoke with CNBC said the CDC’s system needed to be overhauled, but acknowledged that shifting control away from the health agency in the midst of a public health crisis raises some red flags.
Jose Arrieta, HHS’ chief information officer, said Monday on a conference call with reporters that the CDC’s reporting system only collected data from about 3,000 of the country’s roughly 6,200 hospitals. HHS’ new system collects data from about 4,500 hospitals most days, he added.
“We’re showing you a data set that is more robust and has more coverage than anything we have published, historically, before,” he said. “Data is the single most important thing is being able to respond and we want to create a national discussion around the importance of data sharing in responding to a pandemic like Covid-19.”
This is breaking news. Check back here for updates.
Source: CNBC