The agency led by Dr. Mehmet Oz is proposing an end to weekly tracking of respiratory infections at nursing homes where thousands of elderly residents died in the pandemic. A draft summary of the proposed rule obtained by The New York Times outlines how the Trump 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. Nursing home industry representatives declined to comment on specifics, because the changes have not been announced.

They contend infection reporting consumes too much staff time and is duplicative, because infection data is reported to the federal government and states in other ways. C. M.

S., which drafted the plan, declined to discuss the proposal or disclose when it would be made public. During the peak years of the pandemic, from early 2020 through early 2022, more than 200,000 nursing home residents and staff members died after being infected by coronavirus, according to KFF, an independent health policy organization, which cited C. D.

C. data. The high death toll has been attributed in part to a lack of preparedness and weak infection controls. The Government Accountability Office said in 2020 that inspectors had cited 82 percent of nursing homes for infection control deficiencies from 2013 to 2017, and that half of those were found to be repeat violators.

In the internal document obtained by The Times, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the director of C. M. S., recommended to his boss, Health Secretary Robert F.

Kennedy Jr., that the agency pursue steps to undo the mandate. “The agency does not comment on purported internal or pre-decisional deliberative materials,” a C. M. S. a spokesman said in an email.

He said the agency evaluated regulations to ensure they “allow providers to focus time and resources on delivering care rather than unnecessary administrative burden.” The draft memo from Dr. Oz to Mr. Kennedy said C. M. S. would reserve the power to reinstate weekly reporting if another public health emergency occurred.

The plan also would end a requirement that nursing home staffs be educated about Covid vaccines and offered the shots. Groups representing residents called the move unwise, pointing out that frontline caregivers were a key pathway for the coronavirus to enter nursing homes during the height of the pandemic. Covid vaccine rates among staff members in recent years have been below 10 percent, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.