Improving COVID-19 Data Transparency Act
This bill requires the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to take certain actions with respect to reporting and modeling COVID-19 (i.e., coronavirus disease 2019) data. It also requires health information technology, as a condition of certification by HHS, to automatically generate and transmit reports of possible reportable conditions from electronic health records to public health agencies.
The CDC must standardize the reporting of COVID-19 data by governmental health departments, including information related to contact tracing and surveillance, hospital admissions and outcomes, outbreaks, and community compliance with preventive measures. The CDC must also post and periodically update this information on its website.
In addition, the CDC must provide sufficient information about federal COVID-19 models to allow them to be reproduced, and HHS must enter into an agreement with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to study issues related to COVID-19 modeling, including the data sources used in the models.
The CDC must also deliver a weekly televised presentation that is open to the media on its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a publication that reports surveillance statistics and other public health information and recommendations.
[Congressional Bills 116th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 8073 Introduced in House (IH)]
<DOC>
116th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. R. 8073
To require the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention to create a standardized method for State, Tribal, and local
health departments to report to the Centers with respect to COVID-19,
and for other purposes.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
August 21, 2020
Mr. Beyer (for himself, Ms. Sewell of Alabama, Mr. Connolly, Mr.
Vargas, Ms. Porter, Mr. Takano, Mr. Sablan, Ms. Sherrill, Mr. Pascrell,
Mr. Deutch, and Ms. Gabbard) introduced the following bill; which was
referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce
_______________________________________________________________________
A BILL
To require the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention to create a standardized method for State, Tribal, and local
health departments to report to the Centers with respect to COVID-19,
and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Improving COVID-19 Data Transparency
Act''.
SEC. 2. STANDARDIZED METHOD FOR HEALTH DEPARTMENT REPORTING .
(a) In General.--Not later than 30 days after the date of enactment
of this Act, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention shall create a standardized method for State, Tribal, and
local health departments to report to the Centers with respect to
COVID-19 the following:
(1) New confirmed and probable cases in the respective
jurisdiction, including--
(A) per capita rates by date;
(B) the 7-day moving average;
(C) disaggregation of the new cases, if known, by
whether the cases are part of an identifiable outbreak
versus community spread; and
(D) the percentage of new cases epidemiologically
linked to at least one other case.
(2) Daily hospitalizations of patients in the respective
jurisdiction with a confirmed or presumed case of COVID-19,
including--
(A) per capita rates by date; and
(B) the 7-day moving average.
(3) The percentage of hospital beds occupied by such
patients.
(4) Daily numbers of such patients in the intensive care
unit.
(5) Daily numbers of such patients on ventilators.
(6) How long such patients have been in the hospital.
(7) Trends in emergency departments of patients with COVID-
like illness and influenza-like illness.
(8) Daily numbers of diagnostic and serological tests
administered for SARS-CoV-2 with respect to patients in the
respective jurisdiction, disaggregated by--
(A) the type of test;
(B) the testing positivity rate of each type of
test, including a 7-day moving average; and
(C) testing per capita rates by date for each type
of test, including a 7-day moving average.
(9) The sensitivity and specificity of each such type of
test.
(10) Daily numbers and percentages of contacts traced with
respect to patients in the respective jurisdiction and the
percentages of such contacts who know each other.
(11) The rate of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the
respective jurisdiction.
(12) Daily numbers of deaths of individuals with a
confirmed or probable case of COVID-19 and per capita rates of
such deaths, with a 7-day moving average.
(13) Daily averages, and 7-day moving averages, of
turnaround time for diagnostic tests for COVID-19--
(A) from the time of specimen collection to
reporting; and
(B) from the time of specimen collection to
isolation of confirmed cases.
(14) Institutions in the respective jurisdiction with major
outbreaks of COVID-19, including any such nursing homes,
prisons, schools, and meatpacking plants.
(15) A list of--
(A) long-term care and other congregate facilities
(including homeless shelters and correctional
facilities) and essential workplaces (including
meatpacking plants) with outbreaks of COVID-19 cases;
and
(B) the numbers of deaths of residents (as
applicable) and staff of such facilities and
workplaces.
(16) A weekly percentage of residents in the respective
jurisdiction wearing masks correctly in public indoor settings,
based on direct observation or security camera analysis, by a
standard, consistent method.
(17) The weekly percentage of new confirmed and probable
cases among quarantined contacts.
(18) Daily numbers of new confirmed and probable cases of
COVID-19 among health care workers that are not confirmed to
have been contracted outside of the workplace.
(b) Disaggregation Required.--The Director of the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention shall ensure that the standardized
method of reporting under subsection (a) requires the disaggregation of
data by gender, age, cohort, race, and ethnicity.
(c) Posting by CDC.--The Director of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention shall--
(1) post the information described in paragraphs (1)
through (19) of subsection (a), to the extent such information
is in the possession of the Centers, on the public website of
the Centers, except that such posting shall exclude any
individually identifiable information; and
(2) to the extent feasible disaggregate such information by
State, Tribal, and local jurisdiction.
(d) Updates.--The Director of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention--
(1) shall, as appropriate, periodically update the method
posted under subsection (a); and
(2) may revise and expand the reporting categories listed
in such subsection.
(e) State.--In this section, the term ``State'' includes the
District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Northern
Mariana Islands, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa.
SEC. 3. TELEVISED REPORTING OF MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY WEEKLY REPORT.
Each week, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention shall--
(1) deliver a televised presentation of its Morbidity and
Mortality Weekly Report;
(2) make the presentation open to the media; and
(3) assign a career civil servant to deliver the
presentation.
SEC. 4. MODELING TRANSPARENCY.
(a) Ensuring Reproducibility.--The Secretary of Health and Human
Services, acting through the Director of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, shall ensure that any COVID-19 modeling that is
conducted or supported by the Centers is fully reproducible by sharing,
to the extent permissible and appropriate, the information needed to
reproduce such modeling, including any modeling code.
(b) Report.--The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall enter
into an arrangement with the National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine to prepare, not later than 6 months after the
date of enactment of this Act, and publish a report on--
(1) the sources of data and information relied on by
entities for COVID-19 modeling;
(2) the reasons why the Institute for Health Metrics, Johns
Hopkins University, The COVID Tracking Project, and
1Point3Acres decided to start COVID-19 modeling;
(3) the coordination and financial support that has been
provided by the Federal Government for COVID-19 modeling to
entites conducting COVID-19 modeling that have been widely
relied upon; and
(4) what can be done to ensure the continuation and
availability of reliable COVID-19 modeling.
SEC. 5. IMPROVED CASE REPORTING.
Section 3001(c)(5) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C.
300jj-11(c)(5)) is amended--
(1) by redesignating subparagraph (E) as subparagraph (F);
(2) in subparagraph (F), as redesignated, after
``subparagraph (D)'' by inserting ``or (E)''; and
(3) after executing the redesignation made by paragraph
(1), by inserting after subparagraph (D) the following:
``(E) Additional conditions of certification.--Not
later than 1 year after the date of enactment of the
COVID-19 Data Transparency Act, the Secretary, through
notice and comment rulemaking, shall require, as a
condition of certification and maintenance of
certification for programs maintained or recognized
under this paragraph, consistent with other conditions
and requirements under this title, that the health
information technology developer or entity provides
assurances satisfactory to the Secretary that the
health information technology is designed to effectuate
the automated generation and transmission of reports of
possible reportable conditions from electronic health
records to public health agencies for review and
action.''.
<all>
Introduced in House
Introduced in House
Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
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