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The United States is failing to report vital information on Covid-19 that could help track the spread of the disease and prevent the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans, according to the first comprehensive review of the nation’s coronavirus data.
The report, Tracking Covid-19 in the United States, paints a bleak picture of the country’s response to the disease. Five months into the pandemic, the essential intelligence that would allow public health authorities to get to grips with the virus is still not being compiled in usable form.
That includes critical data on testing, contact tracing, new cases and deaths.
What the authors call “life-and-death information” is being pulled together haphazardly by individual states in a way that is “inconsistent, incomplete and inaccessible in most locations”. Without such intelligence the country is effectively walking blind, with very little chance of getting “our children to school in the fall, ourselves back to work, our economy restarted, and preventing tens of thousands of deaths”.
DHS pins blame on local officials for federal government’s presence in Portland
At a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) press conference about “Violence, Chaos, and Anarchy in Portland,” agency leadership repeatedly blamed local officials for the federal government’s presence in the Oregon city.
The acting DHS secretary, Chad Wolf, focused much of his remarks on protestors who are targeting a federal courthouse and the federal government’s right to protect its property. He criticized Portland and Oregon lawmakers for taking “little to no action” in response to building damage.
When a reporter asked Wolf how the agency was trying to de-escalate tensions in Portland, he deflected the question and said he had offered resources to Portland’s mayor and Oregon’s governor.
Another reporter asked Wolf about criticism that the federal government’s actions are authoritarian, since the governor and mayor do not want DHS deployed there. Wolf said: “The fact that we are there is because local officials are not taking action.”
Wolf said since 4 July, federal law enforcement had arrested 43 people in the city. This includes federal officials outside of DHS, such as the US Marshals.
Wolf was also asked multiple times about Donald Trump’s vow on Monday to send more DHS personnel into other cities. Wolf stopped short of saying the president was wrong, but said DHS personnel had not been deployed to other cities and repeatedly stated the situation in Portland was “unique.”