According to Tesla, more than 10,000 people work at its electric car assembly plant in Fremont, California. How many have been infected with COVID-19?

Tesla won’t say it. Nor will the Department of Public Health of the Alameda Regency. The counties, which include the cities of Fremont and Oakland, cite federal health privacy laws to explain silence.

But experts say the law in question is not very clear cut. And elected officials and workers’ advocates began to talk, not only about Tesla but also about the tightness of public health institutions holding information that could better inform the public about life and death issues.

Some people say, holding back detailed information about where COVID-19 is clustered, risks losing the support of the people they are trying to protect.

“When you don’t give people that kind of information, people get cynical,” said Santa Clara County Superintendent Dave Cortese, who has grappled with his own public health department regarding data transparency.

“My voters are starting to wonder, how serious is this?” she says. “On the one hand, they say it’s important to wear masks, that businesses must be closed. On the other hand, they won’t tell me where the clusters are [of cases] is. This is not about transparency for the sake of transparency. It’s about whether my neighbor should go to a convenience store because there are 14 infections there. “

This problem was mainly indicted in Alameda District, where Tesla defied public health orders and reopened the factory a week earlier than the date given by the county.

Chief Executive Elon Musk invited officials to arrest him. The district surrendered, the factory reopened, and thousands returned to work on the assembly line.

In an internal email recently sent to workers by the head of safety of Tesla Laurie Shelby, the recognized company workers have been infected but did not say how many. The e-mail also claimed that all infections occurred outside the factory, with “zero transmission of Covid-19 at work.” The e-mail did not provide details about how it could reach that conclusion. The Washington Post reported the existence of a case in Tesla on Tuesday.

Alameda County has the highest number of COVID-19 cases in Northern California; Since Musk opposed the county command on May 11, cumulative cases have more than doubled, up 104% from 2,064 to 4,207 on Sunday.

Across the eastern border of Alameda in San Joaquin County, where housing is relatively affordable for factory workers, cash has increased 149% since May 11, to 1,550. Santa Clara County – the heart of Silicon Valley, with housing prices among the highest in the country and filled with software specialists who can work from home – had more cases than Alameda on May 11 but now has 983 fewer. The number of cases since May 11 only rose by 27%.

The public does not know whether Tesla is contributing to the burgeoning Alameda caseload, and if so, how much. The Alameda Regency Public Health Department has numbers but maintains confidentiality.

A Alameda Regency spokesman said federal health privacy laws prevented the disclosure of Tesla data. Asked to specify exactly which part of the law prohibits the dissemination of data collected, the spokesman sent link to legal language – Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act – and does not provide further comment.

Alameda County Administrator Susan Muranishi declined the request for comment. Alameda’s top health officer, Dr. Erica Pan, also refused. Four of the five selected Alameda Regency supervisors did not return phone calls or emails from The Times. A representative for Supervisor Scott Haggerty said, “Maybe next week.” Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.

All workers have the right to know whether their place of business is a coronavirus hot spot, said Mara Ortenburger, head of communications and research at Worksafe, a labor rights group. “They deserve to know so they can take steps to support themselves and their families” by deciding whether to go to work or not, he said. “This is very important if they have an older family or people with a low immune system at home.”

Sallie Milam, deputy director of the Public Health Law Network, said the employer data “can also provide management incentives to comply with public health orders and provide measures to protect their workforce.”

Tesla workers complained about receiving little information about coronavirus infections at the Fremont plant, San Francisco Chronicle reported. “They say you don’t need to know unless you are on the edge,” a worker told the Chronicle, referring to efforts to trace the infected workers’ contacts.

Data transparency has become a hot topic among regional health officials across the country, said Lori Freeman, CEO of National Assn. District and City Health Officers. “There is a lot of pressure on the health department to release information,” he said. “They are starting to be very conservative, but the pressure has increased over time” – pressure, he said, especially from elected officials.

Many health officials echoed the opinion of Alameda Regency that HIPAA, in books since 1996, prevented any disclosure of public health information that could identify a person.

But the law is complicated. “This is a maze of regulations,” Milam said. Many health institutions take legal interpretations too tight, said Al-Amyn Sumar, a lawyer and health privacy specialist at Ballard Spahr’s law firm in Washington. HIPAA provides several opportunities for public health institutions, especially if there are state laws that replace HIPAA.

“There will be minimal privacy interests” in location-specific location information but “significant public interest in knowing where the outbreak occurred and what public health responses to it are,” he said. It is not clear how California law fits into his analysis, he said.

In Iowa last month, the Black Hawk County Health Department, under pressure from the public and news media, announced 1,031 the worker has been infected at the Tyson Foods meatpacking plant there.

Public health agencies are generally unfamiliar with public controversies over data releases and tend to be conservative, Milam said. Provisions in the HIPAA can be interpreted as limiting employer identification, he said. But there are ways for public health institutions to free themselves from the HIPAA yoke. This involves changing the organizational structure to “hybrid entity. “

The concept is simple: Public health institutions are subject to HIPAA when they provide health services directly to patients. That makes the agency “borne” by HIPAA. Even a doctor practicing on staff makes the whole health agency a closed entity. If the health office does not provide health services, it is not included in HIPAA. Large counties throughout the US usually provide health services.

However, every protected body can transform itself into a hybrid agent, by creating an information wall between health care providers and other public health departments, Milam said. The California Department of Public Health, for example, is a hybrid entity.

Before the pandemic, public health agencies were generally not under pressure to convert, and many might not even know the choice existed.

Freeman, from the district and municipal health associations, said he was interested. “Pandemic will change a lot of things,” he said. “This will cause us to stop and determine if what we have fits our needs and maybe reread” several policies.

The Times sent an email to a spokesman for the Alameda Regency Friday morning and asked if the health department had ever considered becoming a hybrid entity or might consider it in the future. So far, there has been no response.