Healthcare workers from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment check in with people waiting to be tested for COVID-19 at the state's first drive-up testing center.

Federal and state officials across the country have altered or hidden public health data crucial to tracking the coronavirus' spread, hindering the ability to detect a surge of infections as President Donald Trump pushes the nation to reopen rapidly.

In at least a dozen states, health departments have inflated testing numbers or deflated death tallies by changing criteria for who counts as a coronavirus victim and what counts as a coronavirus test, according to reporting from POLITICO, other news outlets and the states' own admissions.

The spotty data flow is particularly worrisome to public health officials trying to help Americans make decisions about safely venturing out.

The Department of Health and Human Services took out of context data on the danger of “deaths of despair” from overdoses and suicides amid an economic debacle, according to the authors of the report in question.

“Even as of today parts of the country are opening, data suggest that this is premature due to a lack of consistent testing, which allows public health authorities to trace, treat and isolate to prevent further spread.”.

The data challenges are making it even harder for the states to balance health and economic imperatives.

In addition to pulling back from its historic role as the central health authority during public health crises, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has established few firm standards for how states should monitor Covid-19 and made little overt effort to coordinate its messaging with state and local health departments.

Brian Kemp has been among the strongest proponents of reopening, the inclusion of antibody tests inflated the state’s overall testing count by nearly 78,000 — a disclosure that came a few weeks after officials posted a chart of new confirmed cases in Georgia with the dates jumbled out of order, showing a downward trajectory.

“It’s going through political filters there in the same way that maybe we’re seeing some information go through political filters at the federal level,” said Harry Heiman, a professor at Georgia State University’s School of Public Health, of the state’s coronavirus data.

Ron DeSantis’ boasts that the state is faring better than most, including an attempt to block access to information on nursing home deaths and the firing of a health department official who now alleges she was pushed out for refusing to manipulate the state’s data.

Melissa Marx, public health professor at Johns Hopkins University

“I have never seen politicians come in like this and question the science,” said Melissa Marx, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins University and former CDC official

Yet unlike in past public health emergencies, the Trump administration has signaled little interest in overseeing how states combat the pandemic in this next phase, and what evidence they rely on to do it

In response to questions about states manipulating and altering their coronavirus data, an HHS spokesperson told POLITICO that “state leaders have the clearest insights into the situation on the ground in their states, and we stand ready to provide support as states begin to reopen safely.”

As for the CDC, the vaunted public health agency spent the past week under fire for its own data issues, after confirming it, too, was combining different types of tests in calculating the nation’s testing totals

The CDC, which blamed the lapse on combined testing numbers reported by individual states, said it will break out figures for the different tests “in the coming weeks.”