“If we don’t get surveillance data, testing data, at the pace that we have been getting it, at the transparency that we’ve been getting, we may not be able to report on those sorts of things,” Walensky said, noting the lack of data flow also could prevent the CDC from churning out long COVID studies.
So now the agency is hoping Congress will help the agency access the data it needs.
She said many lawmakers aren’t aware that the agency cannot just collect the data as it would like.
“People have no idea we didn’t have the authorities,” she said.
Legislative options
A bipartisan bill from Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., and ranking member Richard M. Burr, R-N.C., includes data-sharing incentives aimed at improving the nation’s broader pandemic response, but not enough authority to collect the data in the first place, Walensky said.
