A new protocol for hospitals reporting data on coronavirus patients sidesteps the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Washington Post reports.
It adds that Alex Azar, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary, and Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, say they made the change because hospitals have been slow to report data and because the data is sometimes incomplete.
Previously, hospitals sent their data to the National Healthcare Safety Network, which is part of the CDC, and now should send data daily to a centralized system set up by HHS and run by the health data firm managed by TeleTracking, the New York Times adds.
"I worry greatly about cutting CDC out of these reporting efforts," Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Health Security, tells the Post.
Additionally, the Post reports the Trump Administration is asking governors to consider sending the National Guard to hospitals to assist in data collection, a request it says has ruffled hospital industry leaders.