How HHS’s new hospital data reporting system will actually affect the U.S. Covid-19 response
Published on July 17, 2020
The Department of Health and Human Services changed the rules, quietly, earlier this week: Hospitals would be required to report data on Covid-19 patients and deaths directly to their agency, rather than to both HHS and the CDC, as they had been doing. Hospitals are being asked to learn a new data system as they’re struggling to keep up with a raging pandemic. Streams of data that the CDC was making available to researchers and the public have suddenly been cut off, exacerbating fears that the Trump administration is trying to stomp out any evidence that the pandemic is worse than ever. STAT