EXCLUSIVE — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not provided Republicans in Congress with information on where the agency gets phone numbers to contact citizens about their vaccination status for the agency’s national immunization survey, or NIS, a week after the information was demanded.
“The CDC must disclose how it obtained Americans’ phone numbers for its vaccine tracking program,” Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) told the Washington Examiner. “A government agency cannot expect people to willingly give private health information to a stranger over the phone, especially when the agency is not transparent about its practices.”
Carter questioned Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at CDC, last week at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing about how the agency has worked to restore public confidence in federal health agencies following the failures of the COVID-19 pandemic era.
The NIS has been operational since 1994, but asking questions about vaccination status has become a more sensitive matter since COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic were used as criteria for employment and education.
When Carter asked Daskalakis about how the agency collected phone numbers to engage in cold-calling and about how many people are contacted annually through the program, Daskalakis could not provide any answers but promised to follow up.
A spokesperson for Carter told the Washington Examiner that the CDC had not provided the necessary information following the hearing. The CDC did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment at the time of publication.
“There is potential for both huge privacy violations and federal abuse with this data collection program,” Carter told the Washington Examiner after the hearing. “We need transparency, and we need it now.”
Members of Congress in both parties, as well as public health officials across the country, have expressed concerns that ramping up social pressure for the COVID-19 vaccine during the early stages of the pandemic has contributed to increasing rates of vaccine hesitancy around the world, especially in the United States.
Former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci said in congressional testimony that mandating COVID-19 vaccines during the height of the pandemic may have conflicted with the “psyche of the country” and contributed to vaccine skepticism.
Of particular concern for many public health officials is the modest decrease in measles, mumps, and rubella, or MMR, vaccination rates for children. Rates have declined since 2020 despite the fact that two doses of the MMR vaccine is 97% effective at preventing measles.
As of 2022, 93% of kindergarten-aged children had been given the full dose of the MMR vaccine, but several jurisdictions, including Washington, D.C., and Carter’s home state of Georgia, have an MMR vaccine rate of less than 90%.
Daskalakis said in the hearing that the survey performs a vital function in understanding immunity for various diseases, ranging from seasonal infections like the flu and COVID-19 to year-round viruses like measles.
“Understanding vaccine coverage is critical for us to better advise healthcare providers and physicians and others in terms of populations that they need to focus on,” said Daskalakis, saying the survey is critical for directing public health resources.
Daskalakis also said that the data collected and stored at the CDC facility in Georgia are de-identified, meaning that no personally identifying patient information can be matched with the responses to the survey.
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“We don’t track down to an individual,” said Daskalakis, “but only track, sort of, population trends that we see.”
The Energy and Commerce Committee has been highly critical of the Department of Health and Human Services this congressional session for the department’s unwillingness to share information about its operations, particularly those involving infectious diseases.