Posted on 03/06/2020 6:15:52 PM PST by Zhang Fei
Sonoma County public health officials Monday followed in the footsteps of several other Bay Area governments dealing with the coronavirus, declaring a public health emergency while confirming the existence of a second patient diagnosed with the illness.
But Sonoma County officials have diverged sharply in another way from their counterparts in other places, refusing since last week to identify the local hospital or hospitals that are treating coronavirus patients.
Barbie Robinson, head of the county’s Department of Health Services, has cited the federal law meant to guard patient privacy as the cause for withholding the information in conversations with Sonoma County supervisors, according to Chairwoman Susan Gorin and Supervisor Shirlee Zane.
That decision raised immediate red flags with government transparency experts, several supervisors and critics who said it denied the public access to important information that other local governments and health providers have reported across the region and nation.
Zane said she knows where the patients are being treated and that withholding information generally from the public causes “anxiety and distrust,” Zane said.
“We don’t want to do anything to cause anxiety and distrust,” she said. “We need the public to work with us.”
Still, she and her fellow supervisors would not divulge where the patients were being treated.
Supervisor Lynda Hopkins signaled that she was also aware of the location of the local patients. It’s “really important to be forthcoming,” she said in an interview, while also declining to share publicly what county officials know.
Government transparency experts said the county’s stance involved an extraordinary interpretation of the federal law health privacy law, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that bars providers from disclosing of personal information including name, health and financial details about patients.
“I would say it is an extremely aggressive use of HIPAA,” said Glen
(Excerpt) Read more at pressdemocrat.com ...
Until these numbers are released, we’re all groping around in the dark re relative vulnerability. It’s a lot like the period after AIDS became known to the world, without data that showed the primary victims were heroin addicts, hemophiliacs dosed with untested blood transfusions and male homosexuals. In a way, it's similar to the obscurantism due to strictures imposed by the church during the Dark Middle Ages.
https://valleyadvocate.com/2020/03/04/coronavirus-western-mass/
[The coronavirus isn’t new, but COVID-19 is a novel strain of the human coronavirus family with others including the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). The virus that causes the COVID-19 disease is called SARS-CoV-2.]
Sonoma county/Santa Rosa land of weed smokers, druggies,and ruled by impaired left wing idiots.
3 years ago when the east side of the County and much of Santa Rosa was on fire, the impaired leaders did not warn its residents of the impending fire dangers.
They didn’t want to cause a traffic jam. Fortunately, most of the residents left on their own.
It’s a secret.
Not able to provide the XLS file right now.
Yeah, that’s us alright ...we’re all the same here. (sigh) Please stop being so ignorant and generalizing an entire county of individuals. And as far as the fires; yeah, they could have done better, but the situation went to hell incredibly fast. The second time we evacuated, people were b*tch*ng they had too many people leave too soon.
I’m pretty sure HIPAA laws do not require the name of the hospital to be kept secret. No one is going to know the identity of the patient just because they know the name of the hospital.
Unfortunately, they had returned from a cruise on the Nile in Egypt two weeks ago and were not diagnosed/confirmed until this week. One or more attended a function in Bucks County, PA (5 schools represented by attendees at that function) and visited a senior center/home in Maryland in that time span.
The demographics were disclosed - a couple in their 70's and a single 50's.
“What, Mr. Ambassador. You’ve lost more patients?”
If this gets into the druggies communities they’ll run away unless locked down. Addicts aren’t going to suffer with draw’s for a 14 say quarantine....and if they’re provided with drugs you can bet druggies will purposely expose themselves in order not to have to find a way to pay for their drugs.
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