Trump administration redirects COVID-19 data away from CDC, hospitals to report directly to the Department of Health and Human Services starting July 15.

According to NY Times, the Trump administration has ordered hospitals to send COVID-19 data directly to the DHHS in Washington DC instead of the CDC.

According to NY Times, the Trump administration has ordered hospitals to send COVID-19 data directly to the DHHS in Washington DC instead of the CDC.The NY Times states that senior health officials have defended the Trump administration's decision to bypass the CDC by saying that this would streamline data gathering and assist the White House coronavirus Task Force in allocating scarce supplies. Additionally, an NPR article quoted Michael Caputo, the DHHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, who stated that CDC's monitoring tools are inadequate to deal with the current pandemic and that the CDC cannot keep up with the coronavirus crisis. However, the NY Times claims that a downside of giving COVID-19 data's control to a central database such as the DHHS is that this data will no longer be available to the public. This will affect the work of researchers, modelers, and health officials who rely on CDC data to make critical projections and decisions. Furthermore, the NPR article claims that the new reporting system ignores the CDC's expertise and harms the organization's decades-long relationship with hospitals.

The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to a lot of potentially dangerous misinformation. For reliable advice on COVID-19 including symptoms, prevention and available treatment, please refer to the World Health Organisation or your national healthcare authority.