Faxes and email: Old technology slows COVID-19 response

On April 1, a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emailed Nevada public health counterparts for lab reports on two travelers who had tested positive for the coronavirus. Duplicating many data requests, it has placed new burdens on front-line workers at hospitals, labs and other health care centers who already report case and testing data to public health agencies. She likened the state of U.S. public health technology to “puttering along the data superhighway in our Model T Ford.” HOLES IN THE DATA This information technology gap might seem puzzling given that most hospitals and other health care providers have long since ditched paper files for electronic health records. Missing from daily indicators that CDC makes public is data such as nationwide hospitalizations over the previous 24 hours and numbers of tests ordered and completed — information vital to guiding the federal response, said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. Asked for examples of its usefulness, McKeogh mentioned only one: White House task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx receives a nightly report based on what the system gathers that provides “a common operating picture of cases at a county level.” ”We will continue to work to improve upon the common operating picture,” McKeogh said when asked about holes in HHS data collection.