Excerpts from the DailyHerald.com:
The Northwest Central Dispatch System plans to go to court Friday to try to get the Cook County Department of Public Health to release information on confirmed COVID-19 patients in the Northwest suburbs. The anticipated filing of a temporary restraining order in Cook County circuit court follows an unsuccessful lobbying effort by the Arlington Heights-based dispatch system and elected officials in some of its 11 member communities.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle turned down the request, while a resolution to provide addresses of COVID-19 patients sponsored by six county board members was sent to committee Thursday. That resolution earned letters of support from mayors and village presidents in Arlington Heights, Buffalo Grove, Palatine, and Wheeling.
Officials from the dispatch system, which answers 911 calls for police and fire departments in the Northwest suburbs, argue that having information on coronavirus patients would increase the safety precautions paramedics, police, and firefighters take before they arrive at emergency calls. Dispatchers planned to enter the information into their computer-aided dispatch system as premise warnings when sending police or fire to an address, but vowed to remove the information after an agreed amount of time.
“My personal position had been that we should follow Illinois Department of Public Health guidelines,” Preckwinkle said. “My understanding is that those guidelines suggested that
our first respondersemergency personnel should assume that any residence that they go to is possibly infected by COVID-19 since 80% of the people who get the disease have either mild symptoms or are asymptomatic.”That’s a similar view to that of the McHenry County Health Department, which declined to provide names of COVID-19 patients until the McHenry County sheriff and four police departments sued earlier this month. A judge ruled that the names should be provided but must be kept confidential and purged from the 911 dispatch system seven days after the health department deems a patient is no longer contagious.
Lake County Health Department officials also have opted not to provide patient information to police and
first respondersfirefighters.
