The Rock County Public Health Department isn’t directly notifying first responders where the confirmed positive COVID-19 patients live, citing the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Instead, the Rock County Communications Center’s dispatch system is programmed to automatically notify police officers, firefighters and paramedics if a positive case has been documented at the address listed in any 9-1-1 call.
Rock County Administrator Josh Smith told the Rock County Board Thursday night that federal privacy regulations give county health officer Marie-Noel Sandoval “broad authority to determine when to release protected health information.”
Smith said the county consulted the chief legal council for the state department of health services, who “indicated that level of release of protected health information isn’t something that they would support.”
Janesville Fire Department Battalion Chief Ron Bomkamp, who sits on the county board, raised the issue with Smith and Sandoval.
“Her view on it is that the risk of the privacy of the patient is greater than the threat to the public or the first responders, and I have to disagree with that,” Bomkamp said. “We have people going into people’s homes. We added precautions to it, but it’d also be nice if we knew who the people were in advance, for planning.”
“I think it’s very disappointing that they’re not willing to share that information with the agencies.”
Beloit Police Chief David Zibolski told county officials he’s having his officers contact the dispatch center before traffic stops and canvasing neighborhoods to check the addresses of any citizens they interact with to make sure they aren’t one of the known positive cases.
Both Janesville City Manager Mark Freitag and Beloit City Manager Lori Curtis-Luther asked the county which zip codes the positive COVID-19 tests reside in, and Smith again cited legal privacy protections.
He said the law has some clarification about releasing aggregated patient information by zip code, but only if you use the first three numerals in the zip code. Every zip code in Rock County starts with 5-3-5 except for a small portion on the eastern edge of the county.
Smith emphasized that testing for COVID-19 is so limited in the county that most people who are showing symptoms are being sent home even if doctors believe the patient has coronavirus.
He fears the community could develop a false sense of security when they report only eight confirmed positive cases in Rock County, as of Thursday evening. The number of negative tests reached 344.
Smith indicated the single-digit number of positive cases is more a reflect of the county’s lack of testing, rather than a lack of the disease.
“It’s much more widespread than those numbers would indicate,” Smith told the county board. “There are many more people in the community who are positive that aren’t able to get tested.”
The county doesn’t have a way to track all of the individuals who have shown symptoms and are being quarantined without having been tested for COVID-19.
Smith believes the biggest threat is the asymptomatic people who already have the virus but don’t know it.
With evidence of “community spread” in Rock County, Smith said we should act as though everyone in the community has the disease and maintain social distancing.
