Some Covid-19 data-sharing requirements will come to an end as the federal government winds down the US public health emergency on May 11, leaving experts concerned that the virus will be harder to control.
Data-sharing had required state and local health departments, hospitals and commercial labs to regularly pass information to federal officials. But as the requirements come to an end, the federal government will lose access to key metrics, as a skeptical Congress seems unlikely to grant agencies additional powers.
This means states and territories will collect data in their own ways and decide how much they share with federal officials.
Meanwhile, private projects such as those from the New York Times and Johns Hopkins University, which made Covid data accessible and useful for everyday people, have also stopped collecting information.
This has left public health, legal scholars, data experts and current and former federal officials with worries about controlling Covid.
"We're all less safe when there's not the national amassing of this information in a timely and coherent way," said Anne Schuchat, former principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
A lack of data in the early days of the pandemic left federal officials such as Schuchat with an unclear picture of the rapidly spreading coronavirus. And even as the public health emergency opened the door for data-sharing, the CDC labored for months to expand its authority.
Eventually, more than a year into the pandemic, the CDC gained access to data from private health care settings such as hospitals and nursing homes, commercial labs, and state and local health departments. CDC officials are now working to retain its authority over some information, such as vaccination records, said Director Rochelle Walensky.
Walensky told the US House in February that expanding the CDC's ability to collect public health data is critical to its ability to respond to threats.
"The public expects that we will jump on things before they become public health emergencies," she later told KFF Health News. "We can't do that if we don't have access to data."
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