Bill to release covid-19 addresses to first responders passes state Senate

A bill requiring the state to release home addresses of people diagnosed with covid-19 to Pennsylvania 911 centers is to be considered by House members in Harrisburg.

The state Senate overwhelmingly passed the measure with a 47-3 bipartisan vote on Wednesday.

Emergency management officials have said flagging such addresses in dispatch computers would allow first responders answering calls to take precautions to avoid spreading the highly infectious coronavirus that causes covid-19.

State Sen. Kim Ward, R-Hempfield, the bill’s prime sponsor, said she will work with the House to pass the bill to provide information first responders clamored for as covid-19 cases began to crop up across the state.

Officials with the Pennsylvania Department of Health, however, initially said confidentiality of such information was protected by a 1955 law governing the collection and dissemination of information about infectious disease diagnoses. State officials later agreed to make information available with multiple restrictions that emergency management officials said were onerous.

Ward said she took up the issue last month after being flooded with calls from first responders pleading for more information about covid-19 diagnoses.

Such information, including addresses, is routinely put into Allegheny County’s 911 emergency dispatching center, where the county health department tracks cases of covid-19. In Pennsylvania, where only 10 counties and cities have local health departments, counties like Westmoreland must rely on the state for information.

Ward said her bill would ensure addresses are available to be flagged in dispatch centers when infectious diseases become an issue during state emergency disaster declarations. State Sen. Jim Brewster, D-McKeesport, said he strongly supports that measure.

“The covid-19 pandemic has opened our eyes about the need to open lines of communication during health threats,” Brewster said. “Our first responders and front-line workers must be aware of health risks and take precautions to protect themselves.”

“Our first responders are protecting us, so it is incumbent upon us to give them all of the information they need in order to protect themselves while serving our communities. And they should not be forced to jump through hoops to get that information, as has been the case during this pandemic,” Ward said.

A spokesman for Mutual Aid Ambulance, Lorenzo Garino, said the Greensburg based ambulance company strongly supports the bill.

Garino said it is important for the state’s third-largest ambulance company to have accurate, timely information to protect its 230 employees, their families and the nearly 100,000 patients its first responders encounter every year.

New Kensington Fire Chief Ed Saliba Jr. agreed.

“That information would help prepare us while en route to whatever emergency a crew is dispatched to. Anytime the fire department gets a call to check on a carbon monoxide detector or our ambulance is dispatched, if there is a case there the responders could be briefed and know to wear personal protective equipment,” Saliba said.

The Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, however, has raised concerns about the release of such information.

“While we understand that emergencies require extraordinary measures, public health requirements do not justify sharing patient addresses with first responders,” Reginald T. Shuford, executive director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, wrote in an April 21 letter to Gov. Tom Wolf and Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine.

Although the organization urged the state to collect racial and demographic information about infections, Shuford said sharing the address of someone diagnosed with covid-19 with first responders answering calls at that address would amount to “an expansion of the surveillance state.”