Healthcare Providers Tell Trump to Give Biden COVID-19 Data ASAP

November 18, 2020 - The healthcare industry’s leading medical associations are urging President Donald Trump to share COVID-19 data and other critical information related to the virus with the Biden transition team as soon as possible.

The letter signed by the CEOs of the American Hospital Association (AHA), American Medical Association (AMA), and American Nurses Association (ANA) yesterday said that the exchange of COVID-19 data with the Biden transition team is necessary for developing an effective COVID-19 response strategy as cases surge across the country.

“Real-time data and information on the supply of therapeutics, testing supplies, personal protective equipment, ventilators, hospital bed capacity and workforce availability to plan for further deployment of the nation’s assets needs to be shared to save countless lives,” the associations wrote. “All information about the capacity of the Strategic National Stockpile, the assets from Operation Warp Speed, and plans for dissemination of therapeutics and vaccines needs to be shared as quickly as possible to ensure that there is continuity in strategic planning so that there is no lapse in our ability to care for patients.”

The letter came one day after President-elect Joe Biden said that “more people may die” if the Trump administration fails to coordinate with his transition team.

Exchanging COVID-19 data is especially key to establishing a vaccination strategy, which will be a “huge, huge, huge undertaking,” Biden stated in the speech.

Just last week, Pfizer and Moderna revealed that their respective COVID-19 vaccine candidates are over 90 percent effective at preventing the disease. Both companies expect to submit emergency use authorization requests to the FDA within the coming weeks.

“If we have to wait until January 20th to start that planning, it puts us behind over a month, month and a half. And so it’s important that it be done, that there be coordination now. Now as rapidly as we can get that done,” Biden said.

The Trump administration has indicated that it will not be a smooth transition of power as some states continue to perform recounts.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 cases are soaring across the country. Cases were up by 41 percent last week, with 27 states hitting a record for the number of new cases reported, according to the latest report from the COVID-19 Tracking Project.

Researchers also found that hospitalizations increased by 20 percent and nearly double compared to the past two weeks. The number of deaths attributed to the virus also rose by 23 percent.

“Although we have seen cases (and hospitalizations and deaths) spike twice before in the United States, several things about this moment in the pandemic are new: Daily new cases are now nearly twice as high as they were in the Sunbelt surge this summer [emphasis added],” researchers said in the report.

“Hospitalizations have broken the previous national record and are rising very quickly in every US region—something we’ve never seen before [emphasis added],” they continued.

All those numbers are also likely to rise as people gather for the holiday season, the medical associations stated.

“Our nation is experiencing a new surge of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths as we enter into a holiday season that will undoubtedly lead to greater exposure to this deadly virus,” they wrote in the letter.

Several state governors and other local officials have already warned people to limit gatherings, with some imposing restrictions on how many people can gather at a time and where.

“I know this is difficult & frustrating, especially with the holidays right around the corner, but it’s necessary & we need your help to get this back under control,” Vermont Governor Phil Scott said on Twitter on Tuesday after announcing a ban on multi-household gatherings.

Governors in California, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Washington have also ramped up restrictions on indoor gatherings to stop the spread of the virus.