PORT ANGELES – At Friday’s COVID-19 briefing, Dr. Unthank addressed an issue that she says many people have asked her about. Why have you not released more information about the positive cases of coronavirus so the general public can better protect themselves from potential transmission of the disease?
“The reason is, we have a relatively small community, a relatively small population, and so eventually, if you really sent out details about a person, it becomes possible to figure out who and where they are. And we’re very, very conscious of being careful with the private medical information of the people who speak to the Department of Public Health, partly because that’s their private medical information and they have a right to that, partly because when we do these contact tracings we ask for quite a bit of detail about people, and the only way they will give us that detail is if they know that we will guard it privately. We really rely on people being able and willing to speak to us in order to effectively trace them and everyone who’s been in contact with them. And if we start releasing that information publicly, we will not be able to as effectively do those contact tracings going forward.”
Unthank says we have had positive cases in all parts of the county. East end, west end and Port Angeles have all had cases. She says that because of the shortage of testing kits, they’re testing only people who get to the point of needing medical care. But there are lots of people who have mild symptoms and are staying home, and there’s no way of knowing how many of them have COVID-19. That’s another reason for not releasing more information about the positive cases.
“But we also don’t release it because these are not the only people in our community who have covid-19. It’s really important to treat any person who you could interact with, who is not in your immediate household, as if they could potentially have covid-19. Just because they aren’t one of these cases doesn’t mean that they couldn’t potentially transmit it to you, which is why you have to keep that safe physical distance between yourself and other people at all times when you’re outside of your home.”
The numbers reported Friday say there are still 11 known positive cases out of 648 tests, with 45 pending.