HHS launched a new website on July 20 that includes COVID-19 hospitalization data, according to CNBC.
The agency began directly collecting coronavirus information from hospitals on July 15, at which point the CDC stopped updating its hospitalization data. The CDC initially removed hospitalization data from its website, but then temporarily restored the historical data. The move to halt hospitalization data reporting left several states without real-time data about COVID-19 hospitalizations as cases surged nationwide.
Here are six things to know about the new HHS website.
1. The HHS website collects data from around 4,500 hospitals on a daily basis, up from the 3,000 that reported to the CDC.
2. The website includes data for national hospital utilization, state representative estimates for hospital bed occupancy and national estimates for ICU beds occupied and ICU beds occupied by COVID-19 patients.
3. The HHS portal has the same predictive models as the CDC to analyze raw data, and public health officials can also access the raw data for their dashboards. The agency is making data available to state health departments and other public health officials.
4. Some of the raw data will be available to the public and reported online to promote transparency, said HHS CIO Jose Arrieta at a press conference addressing the news on July 20.
5. Users will need to complete an authentication process before accessing some of the datasets so HHS can track who views the data.
6. HHS plans to update the website with a "time-series" feature showing how HHS uses the data.
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