Officials who say they're 'contact tracing' protesters hurt the fight against COVID-19

Medical professionals on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic are not happy with government officials who talk about "contact tracing" protesters.

Not only are they concerned that protests, which have occurred in more than 350 U.S. cities, will lead to new clusters of COVID-19 outbreaks. They're also frustrated by how public officials are talking about those protests, and worried it could hamper efforts to contain the coronavirus.

Last weekend, amid protests over police brutality and the killing of George Floyd, Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington said law enforcement was "analyzing the data of who we’ve arrested." He claimed it was "pretty similar" to their method of tracking COVID-19 cases. "It’s contact tracing," he said.

Doctors and scientists say using the term "contact tracing" in relation to both law enforcement and healthcare is a serious problem.

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Over the past 3 months, there have been more than 100,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States. Public health experts believe that, right now, the greatest tool in their arsenal against the pandemic is contact tracing.

So, what is contact tracing? Basically, it's the process in which health professionals track down everyone an infected person recently came into contact with to prevent them from spreading the virus.

Dr. Alain Labrique, an epidemiologist and founding director of the Global mHealth Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, explained it as tamping down a brushfire before it can blaze out of control.

People who find out they have been exposed to COVID-19 can quarantine themselves during the virus' roughly two-week incubation period to avoid spreading it to others.

Contact tracing alone will probably not eradicate COVID-19, but studies have shown that it can slow down its spread and help contain outbreaks.

“Any rhetoric that suggests that the identity of protestors would be unmasked using public health contact tracing is extremely harmful and could serve to reduce trust in this public health cornerstone,” said Labrique.

He noted that contact tracers do this all “without revealing the identity of the case.” That privacy is important, a major reason why some privacy experts are wary of contact-tracing apps.

Amnesty International discovered a vulnerability that "would have allowed cyber attackers to access highly sensitive personal information" in a contact-tracing app that residents of Qatar were forced to download.

“Contact tracing is built on trust, confidentiality and rapport,” Labrique said. And people are less likely to trust a health app if they think law enforcement might have access to it, especially if they're undocumented, have a criminal record, or are just attending a protest.

Labrique’s concerns have been shared by other public health professionals and organizations, like the National Coalition of STD Directors. Other epidemiologists took to public social media to call out the rhetoric used in Minnesota.

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Of course, law enforcement uses similar methods as contact tracers to police crime. It's all essentially investigative work. However, health professionals have different standards of privacy.

“[Criminal investigations] are not 'contact tracing' activities and are not bound by the same code of medical and public health ethics to maintain" the privacy of the people involved, Labrique said.

Human rights and privacy advocates have also weighed in. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has called on public health officials to protect the privacy of citizens in response to the rhetoric. It also has requested that officials minimize the amount of data it collects for contact tracing.

Michael Kleinman, director of Amnesty International's Silicon Valley Initiative, said in a statement that "proposals from governments that encourage increased surveillance endanger both our right to protest and our right to privacy.”

"Using well-intended contact tracing mechanisms to track protestors further violates protestors’ basic right to assemble,'" Kleinman continued.

COVID-19 is still spreading. And protests against police brutality don't look like they'll stop anytime soon. What medical professionals don't need right now is public officials sparking privacy concerns.

“Without public trust... tracing activities cannot succeed,” Labrique tells me. “Without this tool, the protests could serve as an incubator for a new wave of COVID-19, defeating our efforts and sacrifices made over these many weeks to stem the tide of this pandemic.”