» Race, ethnicity data to be required with coronavirus tests.
WASHINGTON — Federal health officials will require laboratories to report race, ethnic and other information about each person tested for the novel coronavirus.
The move follows months of criticism that the Trump administration has been insensitive to the pandemic’s profound demographic disparities.
The new guidance announced Thursday compels all labs running tests to diagnose the coronavirus or determine whether someone might have antibodies to the virus to collect and submit information on people’s age, sex, location, and test result, as well as on race and ethnicity. There are 18 required data pieces in all.
The rules take effect Aug. 1. Labs must submit that information within 24 hours to a state or local health department, which must, in turn, forward it to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, stripping off the person’s identity when sending to the government.
In announcing the rules, Brett Giroir, an assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services who’s in charge of the government’s COVID-19 testing response, acknowledged what Democrats, public health experts and civil rights leaders have complained about for months.
Data on who’s being tested “are rarely being reported to CDC in usable format,” Giroir said during a conference call with journalists.
“It is critical for us to ensure that there is equitable access to testing, especially for underserved minorities,” he said. “And without the data we are now requiring, there is simply no way to determine that.”
Giroir said the information would help track outbreaks, improve the ability to trace the contacts of infected people and monitor where testing supplies are most needed.
The data also would help clinicians and public health officials evaluate the effectiveness of approaches to treating the potentially lethal virus, for which there’s not a cure or vaccine, he said.
The administration’s testing chief announced the data require
ments on the same day CDC Director Robert Redfield, testifying before a House committee, apologized for what he called “the inadequacy of our response” in documenting the nation’s disproportionately high rates of coronavirus cases and deaths among African American and Hispanic residents.
The new data requirements flow from the CARES Act, a relief package adopted by Congress that President Donald Trump signed into law in late March. It says laboratories must report the results of tests for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, to HHS and the department should spell out the details.
Since early spring, when the pandemic’s pronounced effects on African American, Hispanic and poor residents first became apparent, there has been pressure on the administration to respond.
Massachusetts Democrats Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, wrote to HHS officials calling for comprehensive demographic data on people who were tested or treated for the virus.
In May, the Lawyers’ Committee
for Civil Rights Under Law sent HHS a letter, signed by hundreds of doctors and public health experts, urging them to provide information that would show whether people of color were being discriminated against in testing or treatment.
Kristen Clarke, the Lawyers’ Committee’s president, said Thursday that the new guidance “feels like it’s very, very late. … It defies logic that they are only now taking steps to provide guidance on data collection. From Day 1 of the pandemic, it was clear there were disparities … and bias along race and class and privilege.”
However, Scott Becker, executive director of the American Public Health Laboratories, called the requirements “a good step” and said “it’s a pretty decent list” in term of the data to be collected.
Becker said that, while the virus is a communicable disease that must be reported to the CDC, many drugstores, drive-up test sites and other nontraditional testing places aren’t accustomed to collecting such information.
He said he was concerned whether all labs could create systems by the start of August and whether testing sites would provide the patient information.