Tarrant is releasing less information about COVID-19 patients than other counties. Why?
The leader of Tarrant County’s public health department said officials are following the law regarding the amount of information they release about COVID-19 patients. However, other counties in Dallas-Fort Worth continue to provide their residents with more information about cases.
When Dallas County notifies the public of new covoravirus cases, officials usually give an age range, gender and city of residence. Officials there will also release how someone contracted the disease and how many people are being treated at home versus in a hospital.
Up until last week, and far behind other areas, the Tarrant County Public Health Department released only numbers. Residents had no idea of the location of the cases.
“We’ve just now gotten the OK from our District Attorney’s Office that we’re OK releasing the city,” Vinny Taneja, Tarrant County’s director of public health, said on Friday. “We have released if it was a travel-related or a local transmission.”
Taneja said sometimes the county is slow to release the information about how a case was contracted because investigations and interviews take time. Future cases will be posted at coronavirus.tarrantcounty.com.
That page includes a breakdown by city, cases, deaths and recovered COVID-19 positive cases.
Taneja said the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the federal law that protects patients’ privacy, is clear in what is and isn’t public information.
“The rule of thumb is that you release as little as you can and you share the bare minimum, which is what we’ve done in Tarrant County,” he said.
Asked why the county hasn’t released genders and approximate ages for those infected — like Dallas and Collin county officials — Taneja said that information doesn’t benefit the public and therefore doesn’t fall under the law.
“What benefit does it do to anyone whether this was a male or female? It doesn’t bring any benefit to anyone,” he said. “What are you going to do, stop talking to males? It doesn’t matter if it’s male or female. We don’t get into a particular age because what is the benefit? We’re telling everybody that people over 60 are at a high risk, that’s what people need to know. Do they care that there’s a person in their 70s or 90s that died?”
HIPAA experts say the law operates in a gray area that not only is up for interpretation, but is also at the discretion of public health officials. Its main focus is to protect the identity of patients. So while Tarrant and Dallas counties are releasing different amounts of information, neither county is legally in the wrong.
Jenny Givens, a partner at Gray Reed Attorneys and Counselors in Dallas, said she doesn’t think the general public would be able to piece together the identity of a COVID-19 patient using just his city, age range, gender and whether he is isolating at home or in a hospital.
She said in a way, releasing that information could be helpful to the public. The more anxiety people feel, the more information they want.
“Think about the information we originally had, that we didn’t believe this virus was infecting the younger population and now we’re learning that is not the case,” she said. “By releasing these statistics it makes it real and it shows people you are at risk, which could help them take measures to protect themselves. I do feel that releasing that summary data is helpful ... Sometimes the more people know the safer they feel, especially when you’re getting it from a credible source.”
Between March 13 and 17, Dallas County reported 17 cases. Twelve of those people were under 50 and not in the high-risk category. Five were over 60. The age bracket with the most infections in Dallas County is 18 to 40.
Males are also reporting the most infections at 55.4%. A recent look at cases in Italy showed that more men are affected by the virus than women.
Dallas County also releases how many patients have been hospitalized and how many are recovering at home, which gives residents and idea about the severity of symptoms in their area.
According to data released last week, 72% of Dallas COVID-19 patients were never hospitalized.
On the other hand, Erin Jackson, a managing partner Jackson LLP: Healthcare Lawyers in Illinois, said she can see why Tarrant County officials wouldn’t want to release that information.
“If they felt the numbers weren’t representative of the seriousness of the threat or the numbers are not an accurate representation of what’s going on in the county, I can see them saying it will only create a false sense of security,” she said.
Taneja said the county is not trying to hide information from the public.
“We’re bound by law and release only things that are going to help and protect the public health,” Taneja said. “There’s always a solid reason when we put something out in the public.”
Taneja said information like how the virus was transmitted can be important — and therefore releasable — because it can help explain to the public why it is being told not to gather in groups over 50 or why restaurants and bars have been closed.
There have been 14 cases in Tarrant County where the patients didn’t know how they contracted COVID-19.
Getting tested
Asked how many people in Tarrant County have been tested, Taneja said he didn’t have that number, as it’s hard to obtain accurate data. The Tarrant County testing lab is used by 33 other North Texas counties.
“About 52% of the tests are Tarrant County, and the second biggest being Denton County,” he said. “And more and more private labs and hospital labs are bringing in their capabilities. They’re are reporting positive tests, but we just don’t know how many are negative.”
Confusion on how and where to get a test is still happening in communities. Taneja said his department just a memo to the hospital systems reminding them that Tarrant County Public Health is not a gatekeeper for tests. Doctors do not have to get permission to have a patient tested if they go through a private lab.
On that note, Taneja said there are still conversations happening in the county about opening drive-through testing.
“There are private labs and also private medical entities trying to get these things set up,” he said. “I believe there have been some tests run to see how it will work and how traffic patterns will go.”
But still, not just anyone can drive up and expect to get tested.
“You still have to have symptoms,” he said. “You should still call the county number or your doctor. You don’t want to be in the car for three hours just to be turned around because you don’t have symptoms.”
