The Trump administration is telling hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and report Covid19 numbers directly to the Department of Health and Human Services. HHS which overseas the CDC.
The move comes amid the increasing dissatisfaction of the White House with the way the CDC has handled the Covid19 pandemic.
Hospitals will report Covid data directly to a new government database under the new guidelines. The change is designed to help the coronavirus task force better allocate resources, the White House says.
The CDC has increasingly fallen out of favor with both President Trump and Vice President Pence over the last several weeks. They both have criticized guidelines set forth by the agency for reopening schools to children this fall. They would require extensive social distancing measures be put in place before a school is allowed to open.
There is also dissatisfaction with the way the CDC has been reporting Covid19 cases, including “probable” cases that are usually not confirmed with a laboratory test.
President Trump has grown less dependent on Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the Coronavirus task force in recent weeks.
During a Fox News interview last week with Sean Hannity, Trump said Fauci “is a nice man, but he’s made a lot of mistakes.”
Specifically, the White House points several errors Fauci has made including asserting that Covid19 was not transmissible between people; saying at the time of the first few cases of Coronavirus in the U.S. that “at this moment, there is no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis,” and advising Americans not to wear masks for protection.
Fauci now strongly recommends the wearing of masks and has since admitted that the only reason he advised against wearing masks was because he was worried about supplies running low.
Photo by Raed Mansour