Not So Tidy
In case there's any confusion:
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are part of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
- The new reporting site is also within Health and Human Services.
- So COVID-19 reports from hospitals CONTINUE to go to HHS, but to a different location.
Actually I think it's important to note that the data is first being collected by a private firm (TeleTracking Technologies), and then being passed into Plantir, and then on to HHS. And I don't think the new HHS data site is yet, or will be soon
publicly available. Science published this information yesterday:
HHS says CDC’s data collection system was antiquated and the new one, called HHS Protect, will help it better allocate national stockpiles of COVID-19 drugs and personal protective equipment. The department plans to eventually provide public access to HHS Protect, CDC Director Robert Redfield said at a briefing.
U.S. decision to divert COVID-19 data from CDC draws fire
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/us-epidemiologists-say-data-secrecy-covid-19-cases-cripples-intervention-strategies#sidebar
Since April, epidemiologists from Stanford University and several University of California campuses have sought detailed COVID-19 case and contact-tracing data from state and county health authorities for research they hope will point to more effective approaches to slowing the pandemic. “It’s a basic mantra of epidemiology and public health: Follow the data” to learn where and how the disease spreads, says Rajiv Bhatia, a physician and epidemiologist who teaches at Stanford and is among those seeking the California data.
But the agencies have refused requests filed from April through late June, Science has learned.
Bhatia and other epidemiologists, in California and across the country, are especially aggrieved after recent news reports revealed states are feeding the same data they desire to a federal contractor, Palantir Technologies, that has drawn criticism for data work supporting Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations. For a data platform dubbed HHS Protect, Palantir is aggregating information on the spread of the new coronavirus on behalf of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), drawing on more than 225 data sets, including demographic statistics, community-based tests, and a wide range of state-provided data.(This week, sparking widespread concern among public health experts, epidemiologists, and others, HHS also directed hospitals to provide data on COVID-19 cases and patient information to the Palantir system—largely via a second contractor, TeleTracking Technologies—rather than to CDC as they have for decades [see sidebar]).
Data secrecy is crippling attempts to slow COVID-19’s spread in U.S., epidemiologists warn
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/us-epidemiologists-say-data-secrecy-covid-19-cases-cripples-intervention-strategies
And it seems there's even more details (too much, really) on the data collection process in this report. But note this quote which doesn't appear to guarantee public data access, and there's no new
Hospital Capacity Estimates data after 14 July available from the CDC:
He {CDC Director Dr. Robert R. Redfield} emphasized: "No one is taking access or data away from the CDC."
Readfield noted that about 1,000 CDC experts will continue to have access to the raw data from hospitals. "This access is the same today as it was yesterday," he said.
... According to HHS Chief Information Officer José Arrieta, HHS Protect has been aggregating data since April, with much of that information coming from the CDC. ...
Bypass CDC, report COVID-19 data directly to HHS
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield says the controversial new process, which calls on hospitals to send capacity and utilization data to HHS, was made with CDC support.
https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/white-house-hospitals-bypass-cdc-report-covid-19-data-directly-hhs
So it seems from these reports the first thing this HHS change has done is stop the public flow of some of that data. Is this correct ?
