Following the data with COVID-19
When President Trump ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and send all COVID-19 data to a non-public, privately contracted database at the Department of Health & Human Services beginning July 15, health experts and others reacted with alarm.
While surprising — and like so many of this president’s actions, unprecedented and unorthodox — perhaps a wait-and-see approach is warranted.
Perhaps the data will, if indirectly, at minimum be accessible to researchers working on vaccines and treatments who previously got it through the CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network, the country’s most widely used, publicly accessible infection tracking system.
In any case, while wresting this data from the CDC is new, HHS was ultimately in charge all along: The CDC falls under its umbrella.
According to HHS.gov, the mission of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services is “to enhance and protect the health and well-being of all Americans … by providing for effective health and human services and fostering advances in medicine, public health, and social services.” HHS oversees 11 agencies, including the CDC.
According to CDC.gov, its staff of epidemiologists and other scientists “serves as the national focus for developing and applying disease prevention and control (by) identifying and defining preventable health problems (and) active surveillance of diseases” through scientific investigation and data collection, analysis, and distribution. It “serves as the lead agency” in developing and testing effective disease prevention and control measures.
Chief among these responsibilities is detecting and responding to health threats such as COVID-19. The CDC can’t fulfill this mission without the daily data hospitals provide, so from this point the nation’s research and response to the pandemic will depend upon HHS staff, who have said the move is to streamline information gathering and assist the coronavirus task force.
Are transparency and direct access by CDC’s specialists needed for that? The nation will soon find out.
CDC Director and virologist Robert Redfield, who was recently blocked from testifying to Congress about school re-openings, said in a statement that his agency asked for this change, and that shifting the responsibility could free the CDC to focus on other critical areas such as nursing homes.
“No one is taking access or data away from CDC,” Redfield said.
Idaho’s Gov. Little met on July 16 with HHS’s Director of Infectious Disease, Tammy Beckham, a veterinarian and former U.S. Army captain whose expertise includes infectious disease in animals. According to a brief statement from Little’s office, Dr. Beckham agreed to send more tests to Idaho to help address needs when Idaho children return to school.
The HHS COVID-19 portal is HHS.gov/coronavirus.
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Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Contact her at Sholeh@cdapress.com.