Alarm over the missing data, which was restored Thursday, became the latest source of tension between the CDC and administration officials.
After the Trump administration ordered hospitals to change how they report coronavirus data to the government, effectively bypassing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, officials at the CDC made a decision of their own: Take our data and go home.
The sudden disappearance of the CDC’s coronavirus dashboards on Wednesday — which drew considerable scrutiny before the agency restored them on Thursday afternoon — has become the latest flashpoint in the extraordinary breakdown between the Washington, D.C.-based federal health department and the nation’s premier public health agency, located in Atlanta.
While Democrats and health care groups spent Thursday blasting the Trump administration over the missing dashboards, which tracked critical data on coronavirus hospitalizations, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services insisted that they were just as shocked when the CDC’s data disappeared from public view. Continue reading.