It looks like the White House is making a grab to control COVID-19 data via a Peter Thiel project.  It is pretty clear that deaths are already under reported (my own ballpark guess is the numbers should be about a  third higher).  The only reason I can see for this change is to cook the books and further under report COVID-19 cases and deaths.  From The Verge.

White House reportedly orders hospitals to bypass CDC during COVID-19 data collection

The Department of Heath and Human Services may collect the data in a central database