Problems surface with federal COVID-19 hospitalization data

The Trump administration’s decision to transfer data collection on hospitalized COVID-19 patients from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to the Department of Health and Human Services has created confusion and, at least temporarily, made the information less publicly accessible, according to a variety of sources. Dave Dillon, a spokesperson for the Missouri Hospital Association (MHA) noted the disappearance during the transition of an MHA dashboard created with data previously submitted to the CDC. The dashboard is now back online, but it’s not clear all participants are still reporting data in the same way. “At the regional level we lost our situational awareness,” said Dillon. (ProPublica story, 7/31/20)