“The agency’s ongoing struggle to track the pandemic’s toll on communities of color has earned the scrutiny of HHS’ watchdog office, POLITICO’s Erin Banco and Darius Tahir scoop.
The health department’s inspector general interviewed several officials over the past week who work with Covid data, with plans to continue meeting with the agency in the coming days, sources tell Erin and Darius. Those discussions, they said, suggested the IG is focusing on what the CDC should be doing to get more complete Covid-19 data.”
“The CDC’s data woes have persisted throughout the yearlong crisis, highlighting gaps between federal and state health agencies and making it difficult to quanitfy Covid’s disproportionate impact on racial and ethnic minorities. That missing information is critical to figuring out which communities need targeted interventions and could influence federal resource allocations.”
“The HHS IG first raised the potential for an investigation into federal Covid data in December, amid a surge in cases. The mass vaccination campaign has similarly lagged in collecting recipients’ race and ethnicity data, and progress in expanding data collection has been slow and faltering.”
“A Government Accountability Office report is also on the way. The GAO is studying CDC’s data collection methods and will likely recommend the agency and HHS condense their data work on the pandemic…” Read the full article here.
Source: CDC Faces Scrutiny Over Data Gaps – By Adam Cancryn, March 9, 2021. POLITICO.
