The head of Mobile County’s 911 system is defending a state policy that allows dispatchers to flag home addresses of confirmed COVID-19 patients for police officers, firefighters and paramedics before they respond to a call, saying the practice is meant to protect first responders rather than expose private medical information.
Charlie McNichol, executive director of the Mobile County Communications District (MCCD), which runs the county’s 911 dispatch operations, said his office receives a daily list of addresses tied to confirmed COVID-19 cases from the Alabama Department of Public Health. As of early April, Mobile County had 143 confirmed cases of the virus, and the number climbs by the day as testing expands statewide.
McNichol said the addresses are entered into MCCD’s computer-assisted dispatch system, commonly known as CAD, so that if a 911 call comes in from one of those locations, responding crews are automatically alerted that someone at that address has tested positive.
“We flag those in our CAD system so if a call comes into one of the addresses for any first responders — fire, police or medical — we let them know that location is suspected of having a positive case,” McNichol said. “I think we owe that to our first responders. It doesn’t give us anyone’s name or any other personal information about the individual; it just lets us notify them that someone at that address has tested positive for COVID-19 so that they can have their guards up.”
The policy, which pairs Alabama’s statewide 911 system with the state health department, has drawn scrutiny from privacy advocates who question whether flagging specific homes runs afoul of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the federal law that shields patients’ medical information from disclosure. McNichol said MCCD’s attorneys and ADPH’s legal team reviewed the arrangement before it took effect and concluded it falls within an exception that allows health officials to warn third parties of a real risk of exposure.
State health officials have said the decision to share the addresses with 911 centers was made jointly with Alabama’s statewide 911 board specifically to protect emergency responders who cannot otherwise know they are walking into a home with an active infection. Alabama law permits physicians, the state health officer or a designee to notify a third party of a contagious disease when there is a foreseeable and probable risk of transmission, a provision cited as the legal basis for the arrangement.
Locally, McNichol emphasized that the information is tightly restricted inside MCCD’s systems. Only dispatchers working a given call on a “need-to-know” basis can see the flag, he said, and the same CAD system already carries other address-specific notes, such as histories of frequent calls or safety concerns, that are shared with crews in the field under similar rules.
“In a medical emergency or not, dispatchers would always ask questions about medical history on the call, but even other types of calls like for law enforcement, we’re asking the caller, ‘Has anyone at your address been sick or tested positive for COVID-19?'” McNichol said. “Most people voluntarily give that information to us, but even if they don’t for some reason, we’re certainly asking.”
The added precautions come as concerns mount statewide about first responders contracting the virus on the job. In Mobile, at least 37 police officers and firefighters have tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies through rapid serum blood tests, a signal that their bodies have mounted an immune response to the virus, whether they are currently infected or have already recovered from it. City officials said additional testing of first responders is ongoing.
Mobile is not alone in confronting the issue. In Tuscaloosa, dozens of police officers and firefighters were pulled off duty after a colleague tested positive for the virus, illustrating how quickly an outbreak within a single department can strain staffing for an entire city.
Public health and emergency management officials have stressed that keeping first responders healthy is critical to a functioning emergency system, since police officers, firefighters and paramedics who become sick can not only spread the virus to colleagues but also become unavailable to answer calls from the public at a moment when demand for emergency services remains high.
The concern extends beyond the streets and into Mobile County’s jail system. The Mobile County Sheriff’s Office is working with public health officials to contain a small cluster of COVID-19 cases at Mobile Metro Jail, where two corrections officers and one inmate have tested positive. Metro Jail Warden Trey Oliver said inmates who had contact with those who tested positive are being separated under a tiered quarantine system designed to limit further spread inside the facility. Oliver said the jail has access to COVID-19 tests but, because of limited supply, is currently testing only inmates who are showing symptoms.
McNichol said MCCD intends to keep relaying the daily address updates from ADPH for as long as the pandemic requires it, calling the practice a straightforward way to give responders a heads-up without revealing who is sick or why.