COVID-19 Case Confidentiality Challenged to Help Contact Tracing

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The head of the national COVID-19 accelerated mitigation task force, Doni Monardo, on Monday said his team continued to work around the issue related to data transparency of COVID-19 patients.

In Monday's House of Representatives (DPR) Commission VIII hearing, Doni considers data transparency of COVID-19 cases is important for the public as it will enable people to avoid those who have been exposed.  

“It would really help society [avoid certain people] if data is available on who have been exposed to COVID-19,” said Doni Monardo in the hearing. However, Indonesia's law forbids patient confidentiality to be exposed.

Doni Monardo made it clear that his intention is not to create a stigma against COVID-19 patients, and that he believed no one would consider it taboo. He maintained this would be important for public safety and help with contact-tracing attempts along with predicting future viral clusters. 

“Anyone can contract the virus, a leader of a nation even contracted COVID-19 recently,” Doni said in the hearing in reference to the President of Brazil. 

Data transparency has previously been mentioned by the chief of the Executive Board of the Indonesian Doctors Association (IDI), Daeng Mohammad Faqih, who proposed the idea to ease the government’s contact-tracing attempts and suppress the spread of the COVID-19. 

However, the IDI figure agreed that the records exposed should be limited to the person’s identity and address without revealing any confidential medical records. 

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BUDIARTI UTAMI PUTRI | AHMAD FAIZ