Share COVID-19 data with Biden team, Trump urged

‘We need some fundamental public health measures that everyone should be adhering to. One state says one thing, another state says another,’ says Fauci

WASHINGTON

The US medical establishment on Tuesday urged President Donald Trump to share critical COVID-19 data with President-elect Joe Biden’s team to avoid needless, deadly lags in tackling a raging pandemic that is threatening to overwhelm hospitals nationwide.

The extraordinary rebuke, weighing in on the White House post-election transition fray, came in an open letter from three leading healthcare organisations as state and local governments scrambled to fight the virus in the absence of a coordinated national strategy.

“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,” said the letter, signed by heads of the American Medical Association, the American Nurses Association and the American Hospitals Association.

The letter was published a day after Biden, the victor in the tumultuous Nov.3 election that Trump has refused to concede, warned “more people may die” if the incumbent president keeps blocking a smooth succession to the next administration in January.