SAN JOSE, Calif. — When the first case of the coronavirus in Silicon Valley was discovered in late January, health officials were faced with a barrage of questions: What city did the patient live in? Whom had he come in contact with? Which health clinic had he visited before he knew he was infected?
But medical experts say that how much the public should know has become a critical question that will help determine how the United States confronts this outbreak and future ones. Story continuesCritics of the threadbare public reporting say it is striking that even in Silicon Valley, which is home to leading technology companies that thrive off the collection of data, residents are given very little information about the movement and dynamics of the virus.
“Pandemics increase paranoia and stigma,” said Dr. Rohan Radhakrishna, the deputy health officer of Contra Costa County, across the bay from San Francisco, which provides only the total number of cases in the county on its website. “We must be extra cautious in protecting individuals and the community.”
Caplan is among many experts who say the coronavirus is likely to spur a reassessment of medical privacy laws. Already, the Trump administration waived some provisions of the law this month. On Friday, health authorities in Santa Clara, which has more than 590 cases and is home to the headquarters of companies like Google and Apple, added a dashboard that charts the number of daily cases and other metrics.
“Reporting positive tests with a census tract or a city name provides data that is not helpful,” Smith said. “In fact, such data has the risk of stigmatizing areas and regions of the country in a way that does not help.” Given the medical vulnerabilities of that population, doctors and advocates of homeless people have called his office demanding to know in which encampment the man lived so that they could advise other homeless people in the area to be more vigilant. The county, which refused to disclose that information, said in a statement that health officials screened 60 members of the “specific community” and tested nine symptomatic individuals for the coronavirus.
Joseph Lewnard, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, said researchers are hamstrung in the United States by the lack of specific data on testing and on the symptoms patients show.
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