The CDC’s decision to stop disclosing numbers of Americans tested for coronavirus has ignited public wrath amid the deteriorating COVID-19 epidemic situation in the US, with American netizens calling for data transparency and more effective measures to tackle the lethal virus.

According to CDC’s announcement on March 4, it has stopped reporting the number of persons-under-investigation (PUIs) and negative test results for COVID-19, adding that each state is now testing and reporting their own results, which means these numbers would not be representative of the testing being done nationally.

Since the outbreak hit the US, the CDC has posted statistics on its website, including the number of confirmed cases, the total number of US deaths, and the number of tested patients, but the last two have now been removed.

The decision drew strong opposition from both the public and politicians in the US. Mark Pocan, a Democratic congressman, sent a letter to Robert Redfield, CDC director on March 4, condemning the institution for its “inexplicable” behavior.

“Americans are dying, we deserve to know how many people have been tested for it, or who have died from COVID-19. Knowing that CDC testing is keeping pace with the likely number of cases is imperative to maintain public trust,” said Pocan in his letter.

“Where are the links to the state reports? Why can’t we handle adding up the state numbers? We even do that with flu report every week, at a bare minimum we should replicate that,” said a Twitter user named Ben S.

Is it a cover-up?

Despite being one of the most trusted official channels for acquiring epidemic data in the US, the COVID-19 data provided by the CDC has been constantly challenged by the public and media outlets. While the CDC says 13 states have cases of COVID-19, a tracker posted by the New York Times lists 16 states that have reported at least one case of the virus.

CDC’s decision to stop reporting PUIs has made the situation even worse. According to regulations, it is mandatory that reportable disease cases are reported to state and territorial jurisdictions when identified by a health provider, hospital or laboratory. However, it is voluntary for notifiable disease cases to be reported to CDC by state and territorial jurisdictions for aggregation and monitoring of disease data.

To date, COVID-19 is yet to be included in the National Reportable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS), though similar diseases, such as invasive pneumococcal disease, has already been on the list for almost a decade.

Even with the ambiguous regulations mentioned above, the CDC has failed to notify the public whether there will be a data report at the national level including the number of tested patients, or which department should be responsible for issuing such a report. Neither has it explained why certain data could be collected in the early stages of the outbreak, but stopped at a crucial stage of tackling the virus. 

“CDC is the national organization, it should be the mothership of all statistics, receiving state tallies. Do we need to rely on state health departments or the WHO? Are you committing real-time negligence, CDC director?”said James Mowdy, an activist on Twitter.

“This is an administrative failure. There’s no good excuse for a complete lack of transparency. I’ve run call centers with better data analysis and reporting. Do better,” said a netizen named Amy on Twitter.

A negative example

Even the CDC itself noted on its official website that “regular, frequent, timely information on individual cases is considered necessary to monitor disease trends, identify populations or geographic areas at high risk, formulate and assess prevention and control strategies, and formulate public health policies.”

As one of the world’s most prominent epidemic control institutions, CDC’s decision is setting a bad example to the world. On the same day, the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care announced that due to the number of new cases, it will no longer be tweeting information on the location of each new case. Instead, the information will be released centrally in a consolidated format online, once a week.

“Not openly informing the public, and health systems of new cases and counts, pending or confirmed, is going to [do] substantial damage to communities,” said Xenader, a netizen on Twitter.

Calling for effective measures

While the virus’ spread has slowed dramatically in China, infections and death rates worldwide are now mounting swiftly. According to official statistics, 158 people in at least 16 states were infected by Thursday, while California reported its first COVID-19 death, bringing the US death toll to 11.

The deteriorating situation has forced the US government to take fresh action in an effort to contain the spread of the virus. Congressional leaders have already agreed on an $8 billion emergency funding package to help fight the virus, a figure deemed by the public as “not enough at all,” while a shortage of respiratory equipment and masks in the US has also caused alarm among the public.

“The government should take more effective measures to curb the spread of the virus. It seems to me that the situation is now out of control, and more rigid actions should be considered, such as community quarantine or more testing kits,” said a Twitter user.