Trump orders hospitals to bypass CDC on reporting COVID-19 data

The Donald Trump administration has ordered U.S. hospitals to reroute where they usually send data on COVID-19 patients.  

Starting today, instead of the usual process of sending the data to the Centers for Disease Control, which then releases it to the public, states have been told to send it directly to a Department of Health and Human Services system that The New York Times reports 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 projections and crucial decisions.”

Meanwhile, four former heads of the CDC blasted President Trump’s handling of the pandemic in a Washington Post op-ed, writing: “Willful disregard for public health guidelines is, unsurprisingly, leading to a sharp rise in infections and deaths.  America now stands as a global outlier in the coronavirus pandemic.”