"The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the CDC and, beginning on Wednesday, send all coronavirus patient information to a central database in Washington — a move that has alarmed public health experts" https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/world/coronavirus-updates.html?referringSource=articleShare

Here's the document.

"As of July 15, 2020, hospitals should no longer report the Covid-19 information in this document to the National Healthcare Safety Network site," it says.

The National Healthcare Safety Network is CDC's infection tracking system. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/covid-19-faqs-hospitals-hospital-laboratory-acute-care-facility-data-reporting.pdf

I cannot conceive of a good faith rationale for this policy move by the Trump administration, and I hope all hospitals continue to report their Covid-19 data to the nation's public health experts at the CDC.

"CMS reminds hospitals that intentionally reporting incorrect data, or deliberately failing to report data that are required to be reported, may violate applicable Medicare laws and regulations." https://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/cms/cms-reporting.html via @MaxKennerly

HHS’s spokesman Caputo—a Roger Stone crony with questionable taste in crustaceans—couldn’t stop himself from a final flourish expressing the admin’s determination to neuter CDC with this move. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/trump-cdc-coronavirus.html

This is so bad https://twitter.com/charlesornstein/status/1283754463086481410?s=21 https://twitter.com/charlesornstein/status/1283754463086481410

Did I miss the Congress rising as one in opposition to stripping CDC of its role collecting Covid-19 data and informing the public about it? Did I miss Democrats expressing concerns about Alex Azar and Michael Caputo deciding what Covid-19 data becomes public going forward?

Credit to Senator Murray for coming at the issue from the perspective of graft and waste https://www.help.senate.gov/ranking/newsroom/press/murray-demands-answers-regarding-non-competitive-multimillion-dollar-contract-for-duplicative-health-data-system-

The thing is calling the data system ‘duplicative’ obscures HHS’s motive, which Caputo made clear in several statements, to wrest control of the Covid-19 data from CDC.