Trump administration tells hospitals to bypass CDC and send virus data to database

WASHINGTON

The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and send all coronavirus patient information to a central database in Washington beginning today. The move has alarmed health experts, who fear the data will be politicized or withheld from the public.

The new instructions were posted in a littlenoticed document on the Department of Health and Human Services website. From now on, the department — not the CDC — will collect daily reports about the patients each hospital is treating, the number of available beds and ventilators, and other information vital to tracking the pandemic.

Officials say the change will streamline data gathering and assist the White House coronavirus task force in allocating scarce supplies such as personal protective gear and remdesivir, the first drug shown to be effective against the virus. But the Health and Human Services database is not open to the public, which could affect the work of scores of researchers, modelers and health officials who rely on CDC data to make crucial decisions.

“Historically, CDC has been the place where public-health data has been sent, and this raises questions about not just access for researchers but access for reporters, access for the public to try to better understand what is happening with the outbreak,” said Jen Kates, the director of global health and HIV policy with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

“How will the data be protected?” she asked.

“Will there be transparency, will there be access, and what is the role of the CDC in understanding the data?”

Michael R. Caputo, a Health and Human Services spokesman, called the CDC’s system inadequate and said the two systems would be linked. The CDC would continue to make data public, he said.

The shift grew out of a tense conference call several weeks ago between hospital executives and Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator. After Birx said hospitals were not adequately reporting their data, she convened a working group of government and hospital officials who devised the new plan.