WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is changing the way hospitals report COVID-19 patient information by ordering hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and send that data to a central database in Washington.

The new instructions were recently posted on the Department of Health and Human Services’ website.

"The change happened ostensibly because the Department of Health and Human Services was not receiving data about coronavirus in hospitals quick enough, and they felt like they had to speed up that process," said Joshua Michaud, an associate director for Global Health Policy at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

The Department of Health and Human Services will now collect daily reports about the COVID-19 patients each hospital is treating, which the administration says will streamline data gathering and the allocation of resources.  

"It represents a change, and it's impossible to forecast what exactly the implications will be, but there certainly doesn’t seem to be good implications for the CDC," Michaud said.

While many say the CDC data reporting had flaws, some are raising concerns that the information could be politicized or even withheld from the public as a result of the switch. 

"The Trump administration already has ignored public health experts. They are not listening to scientists, and now they want to control the data to make it look like it's safer to go out and maybe COVID isn’t spreading as it is now. This is very dangerous,” said Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor, whose 14th Congressional District is based in Tampa.

As coronavirus cases continue to spike across the country, Castor says the administration is rolling the dice by rerouting critical hospital data. 

"If folks do not understand the extent of the infections, the extent of the mortality rates, they are not going to feel safe going back out. They are not going to feel safe going to work, or feel safe going to schools," Castor said.

Hospitals started reporting coronavirus data directly to HHS effective Wednesday. Officials said the CDC will continue to be central to the federal government's pandemic response, even though they will no longer control the database.