Health authorities still need to balance legal obligations with transparency as more details about COVID cases in Canberra are released, the ACT's Health Minister has said.
Rachel Stephen-Smith has addressed changes to reporting on the territory's COVID-19 situation after ACT Health agreed to release more information on virus cases.
However, health authorities still claim they are prevented from releasing information around the vaccination status of individuals or underlying health conditions due to the Health Records Act.
They have argued that in a jurisdiction the size of Canberra this information could be identifiable information, even if no further personal details are released.
Weekly epidemiological reports from ACT Health have undergone a massive shake-up, after The Canberra Times revealed health authorities had blocked the release of some COVID data.
A more detailed epidemiological report was released last week, which included information on where COVID-19 cases were in Canberra, the vaccination status of hospitalised patients and an age breakdown of cases in the territory.
Prior to the release of the new report last week, ACT Health only released a weekly one-page summary of the COVID-19 outbreak but this did not always contain consistent and comparable datasets. Most of the data in these reports was also already publicly available.
Ms Stephen-Smith told the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday that ACT Health still needed to balance privacy concerns in releasing more information.
"In releasing this more detailed information on a daily and weekly basis, ACT Health continues to balance the importance of transparency with its legal and ethical obligations to maintain the confidentiality of the personal health information of individuals," Ms Stephen-Smith said.
"This can usually be achieved through the release of de-identified information but it can be particularly difficult in the ACT due to the territory's population size and a smaller number of deaths and hospitalisations relative to larger jurisdictions."
Documents released to The Canberra Times under freedom of information showed that during January's Omicron wave, decision-makers within ACT Health did not want Canberrans to see the kind of detail about people's vaccine status and underlying health conditions regularly provided in other states.
Last week's report did not include the vaccination status of people who died with COVID-19, Ms Stephen-Smith said this was because the information needed to be clarified. It will be included in this week's report.
But while ACT Health is being more transparent, Ms Stephen-Smith said the directorate could only report information of a "sufficient" size. She pointed to a rule used by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare which doesn't report data if fewer than five people are included in a data set for a small jurisdiction.
Ms Stephen-Smith said information that could be linked to an individual could constitute a breach of the Health Records Act.
"It is understandable in these uncertain times that people may be interested in knowing the vaccination status and comorbidities of individuals in ICU or those who have sadly lost their lives," she said.
"However, the release of this individual information without consent cannot usually be justified on public health grounds, when balanced against the fact that this information may be linked to an individual."
ACT Health has released identifying information on individuals who have died with COVID-19 in the past.
On October 1, 2021 ACT Health shared that two people who died with COVID were receiving end-of-life care at the Calvary Haydon Aged Care Facility.
Only days later, on October 4, it was reported that a woman in her 80s who was fully vaccinated had died with COVID-19.
An ACT government spokeswoman said in both cases ACT Health had received consent from their families to disclose the information.
In another case, Chief Minister Andrew Barr revealed on September 2 that an unvaccinated man in his 20s who had no underlying health conditions was in intensive care and being ventilated.
The government spokeswoman said this was justified as the Health Records Act allows information to be released when "the record keeper believes, on reasonable grounds, that the disclosure is necessary to prevent or lessen a serious risk to the life or physical, mental or emotional health of the consumer of someone else".
"ACT Health released this information through the Chief Minister at a time when authorities were strongly encouraging younger people to protect themselves from the Delta variant of COVID-19, including by getting vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine," the spokeswoman said.
"In these circumstances, the release of deidentified but potentially identifiable information is weighed against the public interest in lessening a serious risk to the lives and physical health of others."
The spokeswoman said privacy obligations were imposed on ACT Health by the Human Rights Act, the Health Records Act and the ACT's privacy principles.
She said a key obligation of this was that a person's health status should not be released without the consent of the patient or a legal guardian.
"These legal obligations and competing interests make the release of information in the ACT about the vaccination status of patients challenging," the spokeswoman said.
"By law ACT Health is generally prevented from releasing personal health information without the consent of an individual or their family, and due to the population size and demographics of the ACT divulging de-identified information may prove to be difficult where there is a reasonable possibility that the identity of the individual (or individuals) about whom the information is concerned may be readily ascertained."
