Under communications freeze, CDC updates some important health data but not others

With federal health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under a temporary freeze on public communications, some data and publications have not been released on their normal schedule.

The agency published some regular weekly updates Friday but not others. It updated one page on the agency’s website about the overall activity of respiratory viruses across the nation and another that specifies how widely COVID-19, RSV and the flu are spreading.

But by mid-afternoon Friday, the agency had not yet updated others, including FluView, which tracks flu strains, medical visits, hospitalizations and deaths from the illness, as well as those detailing weekly flu vaccinations or weekly COVID-19 vaccinations.

And on Thursday, the CDC failed to release the agency’s weekly publication, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, marking the first time in decades the agency has not published the highly regarded mainstay of public health communication.

The current freeze on communications for all agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services has sparked alarm among public health experts. HHS includes the CDC as well as other major agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration.

“Preventing CDC from publishing scientific data via the MMWR represents a radical departure from protocol that will undermine the public’s trust in the Trump Administration,” Jennifer Nuzzo, who runs the Pandemic Center at Brown University, wrote in an email to NPR.

“Americans depend on this publication to learn about the health of their communities and for advice on how best to protect themselves,” she added. “This obvious political tampering with that process will only cast doubts on the administration’s intentions to keep Americans safe.”

In response to a query from NPR, the CDC emailed a statement all federal health agencies have been sending since the pause was imposed and referred additional questions to the HHS:

“HHS has issued a pause on mass communications and public appearances that are not directly related to emergencies or critical to preserving health,” the statement reads. “This is a short pause to allow the new team to set up a process for review and prioritization. There are exceptions for announcements that HHS divisions believe are mission critical, but they will be made on a case-by-case basis.”

The pause comes amidst widespread concern and among scientists around the country sparked by a cancelation of scientific meetings, a pause on travel by federal scientists and requests about diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs.

“There’s just a lot of confusion and misinformation about exactly what researchers should be doing right now,” says David Gillum, the associate vice president of compliance and research administration at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Scientists are unclear whether the pause on travel only applies to federal scientists or all federally funded scientists, for example, he says. They’re also unsure whether their grants proposals should still include DEI information or whether that would result in their grants being rejected, he says.

“There’s just a lot of chaos happening within the community,” Gillum says. “This is pretty bad. It’s unprecedented.”

Others say many of these activities are not unusual during presidential transitions.

Dr. Georges Benjamin, president of the American Public Health Association, told NPR that while the communications freeze is confusing, he was giving the HHS team who issued it “the benefit of the doubt that they’re simply trying to get their hands around the administration — this is a big government.”