A report by The New York Times published on Tuesday says that the Trump administration has ordered U.S. hospitals to send COVID-19 patient data to a database in Washington, D.C., as part of a new initiative that could bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the nation’s top public health agency. Specifically, according to a document published on the website of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), hospitals in the country have been ordered to send COVID-19 patient data directly to the government. The Trump administration’s initiative, which will take effect tomorrow, has already sparked a wave of backlash, with the CDC also expressing concerns.
The database that will collect and store COVID-19 patient information is referred to in the document as “HHS Protect.” It was created in part by data mining and predictive analytics company Palantir . The Silicon Valley company is best known for its controversial work contracts with the U.S. military and other secret government agencies , as well as for being co-founded and initially funded by Trump ally Peter Thiel.
A unique link will be sent to hospital points of contact and will direct the point of care to a secure hospital form that can then be used to enter the necessary information. The guidance tells hospitals to click submit after completing the fields and confirm that the form has been successfully received. They will then be sent a email from the HHS Protect System. This method replaces the emailing of individual spreadsheets that were previously required.
While the White House points out that this plan aims to make data collection on the spread of COVID-19 more organized and efficient, current and former public health officials express concerns that bypassing the CDC may be an attempt to politicize the findings, which may even be modified to benefit the government, and to "cut" experts.
Four former CDC directors wrote an opinion piece published in the Washington Post, arguing that no president has ever politicized science the way Trump is now doing, adding that the White House is undermining public health in its handling of the pandemic.
