(TeleTracking's majority owner, real estate developer Michael Zamagias, has donated to Republican candidates and has ties to Trump businesses through colleagues, according to an NPR report.) Through the office of Vice President Mike Pence, who heads the task force, Birx declined to be interviewed or to respond to written questions, including whether the White House pressured her to use TeleTracking's system. Although that program is widely praised, people who worked on it for years say her draconian management and unrealistic data demands damaged morale and disrupted fieldwork and patient services. During a May task force meeting, The Washington Post reported, Birx said: "There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust."ĬDC scientists and others say Birx's record echoes her approach as head of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) since 2014. And her disrespect for CDC has sent morale plummeting, senior officials say. It has committed unforced errors, such as shipping out faulty coronavirus tests, and has been squelched or ignored amid continual political interference.ĬDC employees with whom Science spoke-who requested anonymity because they fear retaliation-along with other public health leaders, say Birx's actions, abetted by a chaotic White House command structure and weak leadership from CDC Director Robert Redfield, have contributed to what amounts to an existential crisis for the agency. Since the pandemic began, CDC has foundered ( see sidebar, below). The agency's loss of control over hospital data is emblematic of its decline in nine short months. Interviews with nine current CDC employees, several of them senior agency leaders, and 20 former agency leaders and public health experts-as well as a review of more than 100 official emails, memos, and other documents-suggest Birx's hospital data takeover fits a pattern in which she opposed CDC guidance, sometimes promoting President Donald Trump's policies or views against scientific consensus.Īs coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Deborah Birx, shown at a March news conference, has played a central role in the Trump administration's response to the pandemic. But some of her actions have undermined the effectiveness of the world's preeminent public health agency, according to a Science investigation. When Birx, a physician with a background in HIV/AIDS research, was named coordinator of the task force in February, she was widely praised as a tough, indefatigable manager and a voice of data-driven reason. PRESIDENT TRUMP DAILY SCHEDULE UPDATE"Good f-ing luck getting the hospitals to clean up their data and update daily." "Birx has been on a monthslong rampage against our data," one texted to a colleague shortly afterward. Several CDC staffers predicted the new data system would fail, with ominous implications. "Why are they not listening to us?" a CDC official at the meeting recalls thinking. And they considered Birx's imperative unnecessary because staffers with decades of experience could confidently estimate missing numbers from partial data. knows is impossible" during a pandemic, says one high-level expert at CDC. "Anyone who knows the data supply chain in the U.S. Other CDC staffers considered the decision arbitrary and destructive. It is so toxic." That person soon resigned from the pandemic data team, sources say. The reason: CDC had not met Birx's demand that hospitals report 100% of their COVID-19 data every day.Īccording to two officials in the meeting, one CDC staffer left and immediately began to sob, saying, "I refuse to do this. Zaidi lifted her mask slightly to be heard and delivered a fait accompli: Birx, who was not present, had pulled the plug on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) system for collecting hospital data and turned much of the responsibility over to a private contractor, Pittsburgh-based TeleTracking Technologies Inc., a hospital data management company. Irum Zaidi, a top aide to White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator Deborah Birx, chaired the meeting. Around the table, masks concealed their expressions, but with COVID-19 cases surging out of control in some parts of the country, their grave mood was unmistakable, say two people who were in the room. The group conferred on how best to gather key data on available beds and supplies of medicine and protective gear from thousands of hospitals. government assembled in a conference room at the Department of Health and Human Services, steps from the Capitol. On the morning of 13 July, more than 20 COVID-19 experts from across the U.S. Please help Science pursue ambitious journalism projects. This story was supported by the Science Fund for Investigative Reporting.
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