Pocan Questions Removal of COVID-19 Cases Tested from CDC Website
WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Representatives Mark Pocan (WI-02) today sent a letter to Dr. Robert Redfield, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), questioning why the CDC website removed public data on the number of patients tested in the United States.
See the full letter below and here.
March 2, 2020
Dr. Robert R. Redfield, M.D.
Director
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
1600 Clifton Road
Atlanta, GA 30329-4027
Dear Director Redfield:
I am concerned by your decision to stop publicly reporting the number of Americans tested for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) on your agency’s website.
Until last night, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported publicly on its website the number of travel-related COVID-19 cases in the United States, the number of person-to-person spread COVID-19 cases, the total number of persons tested for COVID-19, and the number of deaths attributable to COVID-19.[1] Inexplicably, today, the CDC’s public webpage dedicated to COVID-19 data no longer displays how many persons have been tested for, or who have died from, COVID-19. I would like to know why.
Americans are dying. We deserve to know how many Americans have perished from COVID-19, and we deserve to know how many people have been tested for it. According to former Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Scott Gottlieb, “Right now, there’s probably hundreds or low thousands of cases…that aren’t reported yet.”[2] Knowing that CDC testing is keeping pace with the likely number of cases is imperative to maintaining public trust. With that in mind, when will you return to publicly reporting the total number of deaths and tested persons on your website?
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.
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