Tennessee Officials Owe Us More Information About COVID-19 Cases (Updated)

Update, 7 p.m.: The Tennessee Department of Health has reversed course and will now release information regarding which counties have confirmed cases of COVID-19.

As of this writing, Tennessee has seven confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus spreading around the globe. That number is certain to keep growing. 

The state's supply of testing kits is minuscule. As Kara Hartnett reports for our sister publication the Nashville Post, Tennessee only has 165 kits, and state officials are limiting testing as a result — potentially hampering area efforts to track the virus. In other words, it's not that there are only seven people in the state infected with the virus — there are only seven people in the state who have been tested and found to have the virus. 

As the crisis grows — and even if it doesn't seem like a crisis in Tennessee yet, it is very much a crisis around the country and around the world — state officials have made the decision to restrict the information they release about new confirmed cases. In particular, they announced Monday that they will largely not report the counties where coronavirus cases have been confirmed, but only disclose whether a case was identified in East, Middle or West Tennessee. They will identify metro areas like Nashville, but not rural areas. Officials explained the move by citing a concern for patient confidentiality. Identifying a small rural town as the site of a new confirmed case, they said, risked the individual who was sick being easily outed. 

But that explanation strains credulity and has come under criticism from local officials and open-government advocates. The policy makes Tennessee an outlier compared to most other states confronting potential outbreaks of the virus. 

On Monday, the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government posted a tweet urging citizens to pressure state officials to change course. 

"The public needs to call the state of TN on this," the message reads. "The least populous county in Tennessee has 5,000 people. Saying that alerting the public of a COVID-19 case in a small county would identify that person is just not believable. Come on."

State Sen. Jeff Yarbro, a Nashville Democrat, also said the Tennessee Department of Health should reverse the decision. 

"The State needs to err on the side of transparency right now," he said in a tweet. "And should be trying to build trust. Unless there is a compelling public health rationale, and none was cited, the Department should reverse this decision."

The fifth and sixth cases in Tennessee were confirmed on Tuesday in an announcement from the state health department, which revealed only that they were located in Middle Tennessee. In response, Columbia Mayor Chaz Molder said the policy "leads to distrust." 

"Now is the time to release the location(s) so that those of us on the ground can prepare and respond accordingly," Molder said in a tweet. "Our citizens deserve to know—for their own safety and the safety of others."

When the seventh case was confirmed shortly thereafter, the state released even less information, omitting even the region of the state where the case had been confirmed. The Tennessean's Brett Kelman summed it up nicely:

%{[ data-embed-type="oembed" data-embed-id="https://twitter.com/BrettKelman/status/1237457510241574914" data-embed-element="aside">An hour-and-a-half after the initial announcement, the health department confirmed that the latest case is in the Sullivan County metro area. 

There is no compelling reason — at least none that has been offered by state officials — to withhold this information from the public. However well-intended, restricting information in the middle of an epidemic threatens to stir up rumor and speculation, not tamp it down. We don't need to panic. But we do need as much information as possible to make responsible decisions and to evaluate the decisions made by government officials.  

Update (7:00 p.m.):

%{[ data-embed-type="oembed" data-embed-id="https://twitter.com/kara_nashpost/status/1237521252107071488" data-embed-element="aside">