The num­ber of lo­cal deaths at­trib­uted to the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) has risen to three.

The Min­istry of Health’s con­fir­ma­tion that a third per­son had died came ex­act­ly one hour af­ter me­dia per­son­nel learned of it around 3.15 pm yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, the min­istry once again did not give any de­tails as to the pa­tient’s sex; age; co-mor­bid­i­ty; ad­mis­sion date and even the fa­cil­i­ty where he/she would have been ward­ed.

Fur­ther ef­forts to get that in­for­ma­tion from Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram were un­suc­cess­ful. With­in the last week, both men have con­sis­tent­ly ar­gued that pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty must be pro­tect­ed at all times de­spite the fact that crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion about pa­tients who test pos­i­tive could be used by peo­ple they may have come in­to con­tact with to self-quar­an­tine and seek med­ical ad­vice through the hot­line set up to do so.

Fol­low­ing an overnight in­crease of ten new cas­es, up to 4.14 pm yes­ter­day, the min­istry said the num­ber of peo­ple who had test­ed pos­i­tive now stands at 76. The num­ber of sam­ples sub­mit­ted to the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) for test­ing al­so stood at 500, while the num­ber of peo­ple dis­charged from hos­pi­tal re­mained at one.

In the sec­ond of two dai­ly up­dates, the min­istry said of the to­tal num­ber of pos­i­tive cas­es, 49 of them had come from the group of na­tion­als who re­cent­ly re­turned from a Caribbean cruise and were quar­an­tined at Camp Ba­lan­dra.

A break­down of this re­vealed that 46 pos­i­tive cas­es came from the group of 68 na­tion­als who re­turned from the cruise to­geth­er, whilst three pos­i­tive cas­es were record­ed from na­tion­als who re­turned from the same cruise but came in in­de­pen­dent­ly of the oth­er 68 na­tion­als.

But the Min­istry of Health’s pol­i­cy on dis­clos­ing in­for­ma­tion about pa­tients seems at odds with oth­er poli­cies across the globe.

Ac­cord­ing to UK Gen­er­al Med­ical Coun­cil guide­lines, there are sev­er­al claus­es which speak to the dis­clo­sure of pa­tient in­for­ma­tion to pro­tect oth­ers un­der the head­ing Dis­clo­sures for the pro­tec­tion of pa­tients and oth­ers.

Para­graph 60 states, “Doc­tors owe a du­ty of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty to their pa­tients, but they al­so have a wider du­ty to pro­tect and pro­mote the health of pa­tients and the pub­lic.”

Para­graph 61 notes, “Some laws re­quire dis­clo­sure of pa­tient in­for­ma­tion for pur­pos­es such as the no­ti­fi­ca­tion of in­fec­tious dis­eases and the pre­ven­tion of ter­ror­ism. You must dis­close in­for­ma­tion if it is re­quired by law, in­clud­ing by the courts.”

Un­der the sub-head­ing “Dis­clos­ing in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic in­ter­est,” para­graph 63 states, “Con­fi­den­tial med­ical care is recog­nised in law as be­ing in the pub­lic in­ter­est. The fact that peo­ple are en­cour­aged to seek ad­vice and treat­ment ben­e­fits so­ci­ety as a whole as well as the in­di­vid­ual. But there can be a pub­lic in­ter­est in dis­clos­ing in­for­ma­tion to pro­tect in­di­vid­u­als or so­ci­ety from risks of se­ri­ous harm, such as from se­ri­ous com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases or se­ri­ous crime.”

Para­graph 64 adds, “If it is not prac­ti­ca­ble or ap­pro­pri­ate to seek con­sent, and in ex­cep­tion­al cas­es where a pa­tient has re­fused con­sent, dis­clos­ing per­son­al in­for­ma­tion may be jus­ti­fied in the pub­lic in­ter­est if fail­ure to do so may ex­pose oth­ers to a risk of death or se­ri­ous harm. The ben­e­fits to an in­di­vid­ual or to so­ci­ety of the dis­clo­sure must out­weigh both the pa­tient’s and the pub­lic in­ter­est in keep­ing the in­for­ma­tion con­fi­den­tial.”

Health Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh has in­sist­ed, how­ev­er, that his min­istry will not give out any de­tails about pa­tients who ei­ther con­tract the virus or die from it.