Sarbanes Urges Improved Public Health Data Collection Following COVID-19 [VIDEO]

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congressman John Sarbanes (D-Md.) urged Congress to apply the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic and make comprehensive, real-time data collection and dissemination a permanent part of the federal public health apparatus.

In a joint hearingby the Energy and Commerce Committee's Health Subcommittee and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, "The Federal Response to COVID-19," Congressman Sarbanes applauded Johns Hopkins University for creating an innovative, online surveillance tool to fill the void of data that hindered early responses to COVID-19. He underscored the importance of reliable, real-time data to effectively prevent, detect and address emerging health challenges.

"I want to understand a little bit better where the line is…between what you can collect through the voluntary cooperation of public health officials, private labs, etc. and what you can't really do without the authority to force that," Congressman Sarbanes said.

He continued, "As I ask you that question, I'm thinking about the dashboard that Hopkins built which became a go-to place for many of us - billions of impressions and people over the world - using that to see the heatmap when it came to COVID spread across a number of different categories and measures. My sense is it was largely being done by rolling up publicly available data in many places, qualifying it where it needed to be qualified or disclaimed so that people consuming it understood how much weight to give it in a particular day, but it became a fairly reliable, go-to picture of what was happening.

He concluded, "But to the extent that you've signaled you need more authority to build the kind of robust data platform, collection and vehicle you'd like to see, describe in a little more detail - maybe an example of something - of where that line is and why working with the toolkit you have right now just is not sufficient."

See below(link is external)for a video of the Congressman's full remarks.