Undermining the CDC Puts Lives at Risk
The Trump administration has found a new way to sideline the country’s leading public health agency.
Photographer: Mark Felix/AFP/Getty Images
In the midst of a devastating pandemic, President Donald Trump is destroying the CDC’s ability to discharge its most vital responsibility: to maintain active surveillance of diseases by gathering, analyzing and reporting data. Even by this president’s low standards, this is unconscionable.
With Covid-19 surging out of control and health-care workers in many states struggling to keep up with the patient load, the president has authorized the Department of Health and Human Services to demand that hospitals change the way they report data to the federal government. Stop sending statistics on patient numbers, bed availability, ventilators and other key data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency said, and instead direct the information to HHS headquarters in Washington. Oh, and make this change within two days.