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The agency led by Dr. Mehmet Oz is proposing an end to weekly tracking of respiratory infections at the facilities where thousands of elderly residents died in the pandemic.
Sept. 23, 2026, 10:53 a.m. ET
Nursing homes would no longer be required to report each week how many residents were stricken by Covid and other respiratory diseases, under a Trump administration plan to repeal a key public health response to thousands of pandemic deaths.
A draft summary of the proposed rule obtained by The New York Times outlines how the administration agrees with the industry’s objections to weekly reporting of viral caseloads, calling it burdensome. In its waning days, the Biden administration made Covid reporting rules permanent, adding influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (R.S.V.) to the list of threats that facilities also must track and record. The policy took effect in January 2025.
Advocates for nursing home residents reacted with dismay to the proposed rollback. Elderly, frail residents are especially vulnerable to infections, and they live in close quarters, where viruses can spread rapidly.
“That’s crazy,” said Sam Brooks, director of public policy at the nonprofit National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care. “We know, if anything, that respiratory disease has a disproportionate and deadly impact on nursing home residents.”
He said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or C.M.S., which regulates nursing homes, would be blinding itself to an important method for tracking infection control and pinpointing problems.
The administration has cut back on data updates at other agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where a study published this year found that databases related to vaccine and respiratory diseases had gone dormant.
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