A trio of lawmakers have introduced a measure reversing the Trump administration’s directive regarding hospitals withholding coronavirus pandemic data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Jack Reed (D-RI) said the Transparent Reporting and Use of Statistics in the Transmission of Coronavirus Data Collection or TRUST CDC Act would require hospitals to report statistics about coronavirus cases, supply shortages and personnel directly to the CDC.
“I’m very concerned by the administration’s move to change how coronavirus data is reported to the public,” Feinstein said. “The CDC’s system for publicly reporting COVID-19 data has been vital to our understanding of how this virus spreads, how our hospitals are coping with patients and which regions of the country are struggling. Science and data must always dictate our response to this pandemic and making it harder to access information that hospitals report only hurts our recovery.”
Officials said the TRUST CDC Act requires the CDC to reinstate its website containing the COVID-19 data within a week of the bill’s passage while keeping the data portal updated moving forward.
“I can think of no good motivation for why the Trump administration would upend the CDC’s trusted system for reporting COVID-19 data in the middle of an accelerating pandemic that has already claimed the lives of more than 148,000 Americans,” Whitehouse said. “We need to make sure the American people have at their fingertips the most accurate and up-to-date numbers on which to base decisions about their own health and safety.”