Washington says new COVID-19 data site is better than CDC program it replaced

U.S. officials defended a move to take collection of hospital data on COVID-19 cases away from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, saying a new data system launched on Monday is more expansive and robust.Senior Department Health and Human Services officials tolda briefing that the new HHS program has data from 4,500 hospitals while the CDC system had data from 3,000 hospitals.The group said that the program uses the same methods that the CDC used to make the government's COVID-1