Privacy and Healthcare During COVID-19

Introduction

Corona Virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by novel identified virus named Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). The patients of this disease were first identified in Wuhan, China which later spread throughout world in almost all the countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared it as pandemic on 11^th March, 2020. As per WHO 259,502,031 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 5,183,003 people have lost their lives due to this disease (https://covid19.who.int/). Governments throughout world have adopted different techniques to contain the spread of corona virus and reduce the burden on their health infrastructure. The requirements for Healthcare for COVID-19 are integration of new policies with existing health policies, quarantine for infectious people, notifications to users and agencies, inherent ability to do impact analysis and high user uptake (Chatterjee et. al., 2020; Velavan & Meyer, 2020). These are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Healthcare requirements for fighting with COVID-19

COVID-19 disease causes respiratory tract infection ranging from mild symptoms to even death and spreads from person to person. The number of patients infected was so large that a high user uptake was required by healthcare infrastructure (Blake et. al., 2020). This resulted on in adoption of digital means to existing healthcare infrastructure like use of chatbots, teleconferencing, decision support, home monitoring, use of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and IoT (Internet of Things). Use of all these provide the availability of expertise to large population and in a large geographical area (Kumar & Bhardwaj, 2018). With invent of new online screening of patients and contact tracing integration with the existing health systems became a key requirement. This is because a continuous access to population data is to be provided to healthcare workers, public health providers and to government for decision making (Javaid et. al., 2020). A huge investment on health infrastructure was required by governments throughout world to contain the spread and treatment of COVID-19. This required an impact assessment for geographical and financial areas by governments and healthcare providers was required (Werth et.al., 2021). As corona virus transmitted throughout globe, governments implemented travel bans and quarantines on a large scale. These steps were the first response to infectious disease to reduce the risk of virus transmission but maintaining all these on a very population required new healthcare infrastructure (Dzieciatkowski et. al., 2020). Another key requirement generated during COVID-19 was providing notification to patients and authorities for taking correct steps like isolation or containment. Notifications were required when any individual is exposed to COVID-19 infectious person for taking correct medication. For such notifications WHO and governments throughout world have launched dedicated messaging services in English and regional languages. These services are for health workers, people and authorities to provide latest news, busting myths etc (Yang et. al., 2020).

Privacy Concerns

All these requirements of healthcare system for COVID-19 were implemented mostly through ICT applications which offer all the stakeholders like doctors, patients, lab staff, nursing staff etc inclusive medical services (Bhardwaj & Kumar, 2014). Use of these resulted in collection of personal data of citizens which may result in privacy breaches even after the pandemic is over. Some of the privacy concerns associated with healthcare during COVID-19 are related to location, personal information like age, vaccination status etc, data on comorbidities, tracking credit cards and security cameras to track corona patients. All these are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Privacy concerns rose due to healthcare requirements in fighting COVID-19