The Defense Department can’t rely on COVID-19 patient data it collected during the pandemic to inform future care or public health decisions because that data is “not complete, accurate or representative” of all DoD patients who experienced a COVID event, according to a watchdog report released this month.

The Pentagon’s Defense Health Agency stood up a registry in July 2020 that was supposed to collect and track all COVID-19 incidents logged into the military health system, and an unidentified contractor was hired to take on the work, according to the DoD Office of the Inspector General report.

And while the accuracy rate of the data was supposed to be at least 90 percent, the IG found errors in 24 of the 25 registry records they reviewed.

As a result, the report warns that any COVID patient data collected is “inaccurate and potentially misleading,” while costing the Pentagon $6.2 million “for registry support services that did not meet the data accuracy requirements,” the report states.

[Your tax dollars at work! ~ Beege]