Category Archives: Crisis Management

The surge in coronavirus hospitalizations is severe

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economy Reopening, False Hope, False Narrative, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing, Uncertainty, Wishful Thinking • Leave a comment

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-vitals-b0ebd340-d76f-49c3-8f02-cb2896ae2e8d.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosvitals&stream=top

Share of hospital beds occupied
by COVID-19 hospitalizations

States shown from first date of reported data, from March 17 to July 19, 2020

  • In the last two weeks hospitalizations are:

The coronavirus surge is real, and it's everywhere - Axios

 

Coronavirus hospitalizations are skyrocketing, even beyond the high-profile hotspots of Arizona, Florida and Texas, Axios’ Bob Herman and Andrew Witherspoon report.

Why it matters: The U.S. made it through the spring without realizing one of experts’ worst fears — overwhelming hospitals’ capacity to treat infected people. But that fear is re-emerging as the virus spreads rapidly throughout almost every region of the country.

Where things stand: Arizona remains in the worst shape; 27.1% of all hospital beds in the state are occupied by COVID-19 patients as of July 15, according to an analysis combining data from the COVID Tracking Project and the Harvard Global Health Institute. Texas is second at 18.8%.

  • Nevada is the next worst, with COVID-19 patients taking up 18.7% of all hospital beds. That’s up significantly from 11.2% at the start of July.
  • Florida just started tallying current hospitalization data, showing more than 16% of all hospital beds occupied.

It gets worse: Many other states are showing significant upticks in coronavirus hospitalizations during the first half of July, including Alabama, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee.

  • Many of these states, which reopened a lot of their economies in May, do not have mask mandates.

Between the lines: Intensive-care unit beds, reserved for the sickest patients, are completely full in parts of Arizona, Florida, Mississippi and Texas.

  • Hospitals can convert other areas into ICUs, but that’s not all that useful if hospitals don’t have enough staff and supplies.

The bottom line: Cases have soared over the past 45 days, and hospitalizations naturally follow many of those cases.

  • Rising hospitalizations mean the outbreaks in many areas are not close to being controlled, and some percentage of those hospitalizations will end as deaths.

 

 

Coronavirus updates: U.S. infections top 76,000 in a day as virus’s spread continues unabated

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economy Reopening, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Partisanship, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Public Health, Public Safety, Public Trust, Quarantine, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/18/coronavirus-updates-us-infections-top-76000-day-virus-spread-continues-unabated/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR3cnVHnhbmPw7a_og-oZc1Ocgfs-A_y4Qr6Ht8OKDkxpiWv7E7ydb67EqA

Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count - The New York ...

The United States on Friday set another record for daily coronavirus infections, with states reporting a combined 76,403 new confirmed cases — more than double the amount the country was reporting daily during the initial surge of cases in the spring.

Coronavirus-related deaths are rising, too, after declining nationally throughout May and June. The country reported 963 fatalities from the virus Friday, the most in a single day since June 3.

Here are some other significant developments:

  • A federal appeals court blocked a lower-court ruling that would have allowed the Republican Party of Texas to proceed with its planned in-person convention in downtown Houston. Mayor Sylvester Turner (D) said the event poses too great a health risk with infections in the area spiraling out of control. “In the middle of a pandemic, the doors remain locked,” Sylvester said of the appeals court’s decision.
  • The nine largest brick-and-mortar retail companies — including Walmart, Lowe’s and CVS — have adopted new policies requiring customers to wear masks inside U.S. stores.
  • President Trump affirmed in a Fox News interview he does not favor requiring face coverings nationwide. “I want people to have a certain freedom,” Trump told Chris Wallace in an interview set to air in full on Sunday.
  • California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Friday announced new guidelines that will bar schools in 32 hotspot counties from reopening in the fall unless they meet strict standards for preventing the spread of the coronavirus. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) said Friday the state’s schools must resume in-person instruction.

Infections and deaths are rising in states around the country, led by Texas, California, Florida, Georgia and Arizona. Texas on Friday reported a record 14,916 new cases and 174 new deaths related to the virus. Other states, including Ohio, Utah and the Carolinas, have reported single-day records in the past week.

The sharp increases have prompted many states to adopt new public health measures to prevent the virus spread. California ordered most of its schools to conduct remote instruction in the new academic year unless counties can meet strict benchmarks for reducing community transmission. More than half of all U.S. states have instituted some form of statewide mask requirements, including Alabama and Arkansas, where governors previously balked at mask mandates.

 

 

 

Covid-19 data is a public good. The US government must start treating it like one.

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Asymptomatic Transmission, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Data Control, Data Governance, Data Integrity, Data Interpretation, Data Management, Data Quality, Distrust, Economic Crisis, Economy Reopening, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Partisanship, Public Good, Public Health, Public Safety, Public Trust, Quarantine, Social Distancing, Transparency, Trust, Truth • Leave a comment

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/07/17/1005391/covid-coronavirus-hospitalizations-data-access-cdc/

Data for the public good - O'Reilly Radar

The US has failed to prioritize a highly effective and economical intervention—providing quick and easy access to coronavirus data.

Earlier this week as a pandemic raged across the United States, residents were cut off from the only publicly available source of aggregated data on the nation’s intensive care and hospital bed capacity. When the Trump administration stripped the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of control over coronavirus data, it also took that information away from the public.

 

I run a nonpartisan project called covidexitstrategy.org, which tracks how well states are fighting this virus. Our team is made up of public health and crisis experts with previous experience in the Trump and Obama administrations. We grade states on such critical measures as disease spread, hospital load, and the robustness of their testing. 

 

Why does this work matter? In a crisis, data informs good decision-making. Along with businesses, federal, state, and local public health officials and other agencies rely on us to help them decide which interventions to deploy and when workplaces and public spaces can safely reopen. Almost a million people have used our dashboards, with thousands coming back more than 200 times each.

To create our dashboards, we rely on multiple sources. One is the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), run by the CDC. Prior to July 14, hospitals reported the utilization and availability of intensive care and inpatient beds to the NHSN. This information, updated three times a week, was the only publicly available source of aggregated state-level hospital capacity data in the US.

With 31 states currently reporting increases in the number of hospitalized covid-19 patients, these utilization rates show how well their health systems will handle the surge of cases.

 

Having this information in real time is essential; the administration said the CDC’s system was insufficiently responsive and data collection needed to be streamlined. The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) directed hospitals (pdf) to report their data to a new system called HHS Protect.

Unfortunately, by redirecting hospitals to a new system, it left everyone else in the dark. On July 14, the CDC removed the most recent data from its website. As we made our nightly update, we found it was missing. After significant public pressure, the existing maps and data are back—but the agency has added a disclaimer that the data will not be updated going forward.

 

This is unacceptable. This critical indicator was being shared multiple times a week, and now updates have been halted. US residents need a federal commitment that this data will continue to be refreshed and shared.

The public is being told that a lot of effort is going into the new system. An HHS spokesman told CNBC that the new database will deliver “more powerful insights” on the coronavirus. But the switch has rightly been criticized because this new data source is not yet available to the public. Our concerns are amplified by the fact that responsibility for the data has shifted from a known entity in the CDC to a new, as-yet-unnamed team within HHS.

I was part of the team that helped fix Healthcare.gov after the failed launch in 2013. One thing I learned was that the people who make their careers in the federal government—and especially those working at the center of a crisis—are almost universally well intentioned. They seek to do the right thing for the public they serve.

 

In the same spirit, and to build trust with the American people, this is an opportunity for HHS to make the same data it’s sharing with federal and state agencies available to the public. The system that HHS is using helps inform the vital work of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. From leaked documents, we know that reports for the task force are painstakingly detailed. They include county-level maps, indicators on testing robustness, and specific recommendations. All of this information belongs in the public domain.

This is also an opportunity for HHS to make this data machine readable and thereby more accessible to data scientists and data journalists. The Open Government Data Act, signed into law by President Trump, treats data as a strategic asset and makes it open by default. This act builds upon the Open Data Executive Order, which recognized that the data sets collected by the government are paid for by taxpayers and must be made available to them. 

As a country, the United States has lagged behind in so many dimensions of response to this crisis, from the availability of PPE to testing to statewide mask orders. Its treatment of data has lagged as well. On March 7, as this crisis was unfolding, there was no national testing data. Alexis Madrigal, Jeff Hammerbacher, and a group of volunteers started the COVID Tracking Project to aggregate coronavirus information from all 50 state websites into a single Google spreadsheet. For two months, until the CDC began to share data through its own dashboard, this volunteer project was the sole national public source of information on cases and testing.

With more than 150 volunteers contributing to the effort, the COVID Tracking Project sets the bar for how to treat data as an asset. I serve on the advisory board and am awed by what this group has accomplished. With daily updates, an API, and multiple download formats, they’ve made their data extraordinarily useful. Where the CDC’s data is cited 30 times in Google Scholar and approximately 10,000 times in Google search results, the COVID Tracking Project data is cited 299 times in Google Scholar and roughly 2 million times in Google search results.

 

Sharing reliable data is one of the most economical and effective interventions the United States has to confront this pandemic. With the Coronavirus Task Force daily briefings a thing of the past, it’s more necessary than ever for all covid-related data to be shared with the public. The effort required to defeat the pandemic is not just a federal response. It is a federal, state, local, and community response. Everyone needs to work from the same trusted source of facts about the situation on the ground.

Data is not a partisan affair or a bureaucratic preserve. It is a public trust—and a public resource.

 

 

 

 

The Unchecked Rise in Cases Turns Deadly: This Week in COVID-19 Data, July 16

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economy Reopening, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

https://covidtracking.com/blog/weekly-update-unchecked-new-cases-turn-deadly

COVID-19 metrics by week, Apr 3 - Jul 15

 

The US is approaching half a million new cases of COVID-19 each week. States with major outbreaks including Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas all saw record high weekly hospitalizations and deaths. Meanwhile, worsening outbreaks in many other states threaten to increase the pandemic’s death toll in the coming weeks.

This week, about 435,000 Americans were diagnosed with COVID-19. This is our fourth week of big increases in the number of new cases, and the results of this case surge are becoming clear. As of July 15, more than 56,000 people are currently in the hospital with COVID-19 in the United States. This week, states reported that 4,872 more people have died of COVID-19, an increase of nearly 29 percent from the previous week.

 

There are no surprises in these new death numbers: people are dying of COVID-19 in the same places where cases have been surging and COVID-19 hospital admissions have spiked. Fourteen states reported more than 100 COVID-19 deaths in the last week, and eight of those states were in the South, the region so far hit hardest in the second surge of cases. Slightly fewer than half the deaths were reported by the four states with the biggest outbreaks—Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas—and most of the rest were distributed down the Eastern Seaboard and across the South.

New reported deaths by state and census region, Jul 9- Jul 15

 

Our national view of how many people are currently hospitalized with COVID-19 is clearer now that Florida has finally released current hospitalization data. With hospitalizations from Florida’s outbreak accounted for, the national hospitalization figures are approaching their previous peak levels from April of this year.

Currently Hospitalized, March 1 - Jul 15

Hospital data has been in the news for other reasons as well. The US Department of Health and Human Services has directed hospitals to report COVID-19 data directly to HHS, rather than to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At The COVID Tracking Project, we compile all our data from official state and territorial sources—not from any federal agency. Nevertheless, we have already seen state-level hospital data go dark in at least one state, Idaho, as a result of the new HHS directive. We hope and expect that hospital reporting through many states will continue uninterrupted, and we’ll be reporting what we learn about states’ experience with the new directive.

Outside of the five states with the biggest outbreaks, several other states posted alarming data this week. In several states across the South, case growth is smaller in absolute terms, but the trends we see this week mirror those we saw in Arizona and Florida a few weeks ago. We hope not to see those trends continue and result in the huge case spikes—and subsequent large increases in hospitalizations and deaths—that we saw in the states worst hit in the pandemic’s second surge.

Key metrics comparison - top 5 states

 

Public health interventions in these states have varied widely this week. In Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, new mask orders and other restrictions have gone into effect. North Carolina has been under a mask order since June 25, and has reported a less explosive rise in new case growth than the other four states we’re watching in this group of southern states. In Georgia, the governor has explicitly voided local mask orders in Georgia cities and counties.

This week, US states and territories reported more than five million COVID-19 tests in a single week—a major achievement amid continuing testing shortages in many areas. For context, the Harvard Global Health Institute estimates that the United States will need to perform at least 8.4 million tests per week to slow the spread of the virus, and 30 million tests per week to suppress the pandemic.

Weekly reported tests, May 5 - Jul 15

 

You can learn all about our data compilation process, including an overview of our collection and publication process, our data sourcing policy, and exact definitions of the data points we track here on our website and in our API. To keep up to date on our work, follow us on Twitter and join our low-frequency email list.

 

 

The Covid Tracking Project – Rate of Positive Test in the US over Time

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economy Reopening, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

https://covidtracking.com/?fbclid=IwAR2MeUIGRc9ChxXNGonEAiSDczeKi3UPAle0zDaxNJXxayzUrF-H7CIG7iY

Chart from the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Testing Insights Initiative depicting daily total tests and daily positive tests using COVID Tracking Project data. This visualization is not a dynamic representation of case data and will not update automatically

 

U.S. blows past coronavirus record with more than 70,000 new cases in one day

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Data Governance, Data Integrity, Data Interpretation, Data Ownership, Economic Crisis, Economy Reopening, False Hope, False Narrative, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Misinformation, Mislead, Misleading, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Partisanship, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Scientists, Social Distancing, Trust, Truth, Wishful Thinking • Leave a comment

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/17/coronavirus-live-updates-us/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most

FirstFT: Today's top stories | Financial Times

There was a time in the United States when 40,000 coronavirus cases in a day seemed like an alarming milestone. That was less than three weeks ago.

Now, the number of new infections reported each day is reaching dizzying new heights. On Thursday, the daily U.S. caseload topped 70,000 for the first time, according to data tracked by The Washington Post.

Record numbers of covid-19 fatalities were reported in Florida, Texas and South Carolina on Thursday, and officials throughout the Sun Belt are worried that hospitals could soon reach a breaking point.

Here are some significant developments:

  • Masks are now mandatory in more than half of U.S. states — with the governors of Arkansas and Colorado the latest to issue face-covering orders. Major retailers phased in new mask policies, and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), chairman of the National Governors Association, said that masks should be mandated in states across the country.
  • Larry Fink, the chief executive of investment firm BlackRock, said that if states moving forward with reopening plans required masks, the economy would recover much sooner.
  • Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) blasted Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp (R), for suing to stop block her city’s mask ordinance, accusing him of “putting politics over people.”
  • An unpublished report from the White House Coronavirus Task Force suggests that nearly 20 hard-hit states should enact tougher public health measures.
  • Real-time coronavirus tracking data temporarily disappeared from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website, sparking an outcry.
  • President Trump faces rising disapproval and widespread distrust on coronavirus, according to a new Post-ABC poll.
  • India on Friday surpassed 1 million confirmed coronavirus cases, becoming the third country to cross that threshold, behind the United States and Brazil..

 

 

 

 

Florida And Texas Both Set Coronavirus Death Records Thursday

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economy Reopening, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Expert, False Hope, False Narrative, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Partisanship, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Scientists, Social Distancing, Wishful Thinking • Leave a comment

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2020/07/16/florida-and-texas-both-set-coronavirus-death-records-thursday/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailydozen&cdlcid=5d2c97df953109375e4d8b68#226e63bb720a

Florida coronavirus: State marks Covid-19 case record as July ...

TOPLINE

Coronavirus deaths are again on the rise in the U.S., with all three of the nation’s largest states setting new highs for daily death tolls Thursday following weeks of record increases in new cases and hospitalizations, even as President Donald Trump and other conservatives have touted death statistics as a sign the U.S. is handling the pandemic well.

KEY FACTS

California, Texas and Florida all reported new record daily highs for deaths Thursday.

California reported 149 deaths, while Florida reported 120 and Texas set a new record for the third-straight day, with 105.

Deaths are rising rapidly in Texas, with the 105 deaths breaking Wednesday’s record of 98, which shattered the record of 60 that was set on Tuesday.

Coronavirus deaths in the U.S. declined from early May through mid-June, but have picked up recently, and are now pacing at just under 1,000 per day.

The rise is being driven by record new death tolls in the nation’s largest states—the same states that have in large part contributed to the U.S.’s record rise in new cases recently.

Experts have said that deaths lag behind increases in cases and hospitalizations, with former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb saying in an interview Sunday that “the total number of deaths is going to start going up again.”

KEY BACKGROUND

Coronavirus deaths reached a peak nationally in April through early May with over 2,000 a day on many days, largely driven by the severe outbreak in New York. Now the pandemic has eased in the Northeast while states in the South and West are the new national epicenters for coronavirus.

CHIEF CRITICS

Trump and Republican politicians had used the decline in deaths and a decrease in mortality rates to argue that the U.S. response to coronavirus has worked. However, there has also been a massive increase in testing, meaning that many less severe cases are now being identified.

BIG NUMBER

4.3%. According to Johns Hopkins University, that’s what the current mortality rate is among confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S., a number that’s continually dropped as testing has increased. However, health experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci said early on in the pandemic that they believe the actual mortality rate is around 1%, which is still at least 10 times the lethality of the seasonal flu. And Gottlieb noted that even if the reported death rate continues to drop, if there is an increase in infections, the amount of deaths will ultimately rise, as well.

CRITICAL QUOTE

“It’s a false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death,” Fauci said on Tuesday, adding “There’s so many other things that are very dangerous and bad about this virus, don’t get yourself into false complacency.”

 

 

 

Fitch: Nonprofit hospital margins unlikely to recover until COVID-19 vaccine

Posted on by • Posted in Coronavirus, Credit Quality, Credit Ratings, Crisis, Crisis Management, Expectations, Financial Pressure, Financial Ratios, Financial Viability, Financially Distressed, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Key Performance Indicators, Market Outlook, Net Income, Operating Expenses, Operating Income, Operating Margin, Operating Performance, Operating Revenue, Pandemic, Vaccination, Vaccine • Leave a comment

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/fitch-nonprofit-hospital-margins-unlikely-to-recover-until-covid-19-vaccine.html?utm_medium=email

What Happens When A Nonprofit Hospital Goes 'For-Profit' : Shots ...

Median financial ratios for nonprofit hospitals and health systems improved before the COVID-19 pandemic, which will provide some financial cushion to withstand financial pressures, according to a report from Fitch Ratings. 

The medians for 2019, based on 2018 data, showed the nonprofit hospital and health system sector stabilized after a period of operational softness. The medians for 2020, based on 2019 audited data, are expected to show improvement in operating margins driven by higher revenues, cost reductions and increased cash flow, Fitch said.

“We expect the 2020 medians will represent peak performance levels until the sector is able to recover from the effects of the pandemic on operations,” Fitch said. 

The credit rating agency said the nonprofit healthcare sector is unlikely to stabilize until a COVID-19 vaccine is widely available.

“The sector has shown considerable resiliency over the years, weathering significant events such as the Great Recession and legislative changes to funding,” Fitch said. “However, the coronavirus presents entirely new and fundamental challenges for the sector in the short term in the form of volume and revenue disruption, and over the medium to longer term with expected deterioration of individual provider payor mixes and possible changes in the behavior of healthcare consumers.”

 

 

 

 

Disappearance of covid-19 data from CDC website spurs outcry

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, American Medical Association (AMA), Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Data Governance, Data Integrity, Data Interpretation, Data Management, Data Ownership, Data Privacy, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Transparency, Trust • Leave a comment

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/07/16/coronavirus-hospitalization-data-outcry/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR2ONMOtMxy2LFUw0qKhDZwb1n5yFRv2oCTZlrr49_YpdO8WTzkSC90JjY0

Disappearance of covid-19 data from CDC website spurs outcry ...

Governors join calls for delay of administration plan to shift control from the CDC as Trump administration pledges to make data available to the public.

On the eve of a new coronavirus reporting system this week, data disappeared from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website as hospitals began filing information to a private contractor or their states instead. A day later, an outcry — including from other federal health officials — prompted the Trump administration to reinstate that dashboard and another daily CDC report on the pandemic.

And on Thursday, the nation’s governors joined the chorus of objections over the abruptness of the change to the reporting protocols for hospitals, asking the administration to delay the shift for 30 days. In a statement, the National Governors Association said hospitals need the time to learn a new system, as they continue to deal with this pandemic.

The governors also urged the administration to keep the information publicly available.

The disappearance of the real-time data from the CDC dashboard, which was taken down Tuesday night before resurfacing Thursday morning, was a ripple effect of the administration’s new hospital reporting protocol that took effect Wednesday, according to a federal health official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Without receiving the data firsthand, CDC officials were reluctant to maintain the dashboard — which shows the number of patients with covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, and hospital bed capacity — and took it down, the federal health official said. The CDC dashboard states that its information comes directly from hospitals and does not include data submitted to “other entities contracted by or within the federal government.” It also says the dashboard will not be updated after July 14.

The dashboard “was taken down in a fit of pique,” said Michael R. Caputo, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services. “The idea CDC scientists cannot rely upon their colleagues in the same department for data collection, or any other scientific work, is preposterous.”

This week, the CDC, the government’s premier public health agency whose medical epidemiologists analyze the hospital data, also stopped producing reports about trends in the pandemic that had gone twice a week to states, and six days a week to officials at multiple federal agencies. Adm. Brett Giroir, an assistant secretary in the HHS who oversees coronavirus testing, was unhappy that the CDC hospital report stopped Wednesday and Thursday mornings, according to the federal health official.

Caputo said that the administration’s goal is to maintain transparency, adding that conversations were still taking place between HHS officials and the CDC on a plan to keep producing the dashboard updates and the reports. “We expect a resolution,” he said.

Another HHS spokesperson said the CDC might create a new dashboard, based on a wider set of information.

During a conference call for journalists Thursday on coronavirus testing, Giroir did not acknowledge his displeasure with the reports’ discontinuation. But he said: “Those data are really critical to all of us. … I wake up in the morning and first thing I do, I look at the data. I look at midday. I look at it at night before I go to bed. … We drive the response based on that.”

The CDC site had been one of the few public sources of granular information about hospitalizations and ICU bed capacity. About 3,000 hospitals, or about 60 percent of U.S. hospitals, reported their data to the CDC’s system.

The president of the American Medical Association, Susan R. Bailey, spoke out Thursday on the uncertainties about access to data. “[W]e urge and expect that the scientists at the CDC will continue to have timely, comprehensive access to data critical to inform response efforts,” she said.

Governors, hospital officials and state health officers were given scant notice of the change in the reporting system. Two top administration health officials said in a letter to governors early this week that some hospitals were not complying with the previous protocols, suggesting that states might want to consider bringing in the National Guard to help gather the information. Hospital industry leaders vehemently protested that characterization, as well as the idea that they should be assisted by the National Guard in the midst of a pandemic.

HHS and CDC officials have said the protocol was changed to streamline reporting of data that is used, among other things, to determine the federal allocation of therapeutics, testing supplies and protective gear. Instead of reporting to the long-standing CDC system, hospitals must send data about covid-19 patients and other metrics to a recently hired federal contractor, called TeleTracking, or to their state health departments.

At least some state health departments that have been collecting data for their hospitals and sending it to Washington have already said the switch will make it impossible for them to continue, at least for now. The changed protocol includes a requirement that hospitals send several additional types of data that some state systems are not equipped to handle, state health officials said.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health sent a notice to hospitals Tuesday night saying that its platform was not ready to accommodate the new federal requirements, so that hospitals needed to report every day to both the state and to TeleTracking.

Charles L. Gischlar, spokesman for the Maryland Department of Health, said the reporting change “is a heavy lift for hospitals.”

The new system “exceeds the capacity of the current statewide system” to which hospitals had been reporting, he said, so the state no longer can send consolidated information to the federal government. As a result, he said in a statement, hospitals must provide data individually to the government.

 

 

 

 

Unpublished White House Coronavirus Task Force Report – 18 States in Red Zone

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Data Control, Data Interpretation, Data Management, Data Ownership, Economic Crisis, Economy Reopening, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, False Hope, False Narrative, Leadership Decentralized, Leadership Intent, Leadership Trust, Mislead, Misleading, Mixed Message, Pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Public Health, Public Safety, Transparency, Trust, Truth • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/publicintegrity/exclusive-white-house-docs-shows-18-states-in-coronavirus-red-zone?e=4539e77864

An unpublished document prepared for the White House Coronavirus Task Force and obtained by the Center for Public Integrity suggests more than a dozen states should revert to more stringent protective measures, limiting social gatherings to 10 people or fewer, closing bars and gyms and asking residents to wear masks at all times.

The document, dated July 14, says 18 states are in the “red zone” for COVID-19 cases, meaning they had more than 100 new cases per 100,000 population last week. Eleven states are in the “red zone” for test positivity, meaning more than 10 percent of diagnostic test results came back positive. 

It includes county-level data and reflects the insistence of the Trump administration that states and counties should take the lead in responding to the coronavirus. The document has been shared within the federal government but does not appear to be posted publicly.

It’s clear some states are not following the task force’s advice. For instance, the document recommends that Georgia, in the red zone for both cases and test positivity, “mandate statewide wearing of cloth face coverings outside the home.” But Gov. Brian Kemp signed an order Wednesday banning localities from requiring masks.