Tech for tracking COVID-19 raises fears of mass surveillance

WASHINGTON — Technology companies and experts are coming up with a variety of new methods, applications and tools to track the spread of COVID-19 in the United States, systems that could greatly help government plan and cope with the novel coronavirus.

But these new monitoring systems are leaving lawmakers and privacy experts worried that the result could be widespread surveillance of the health data and private movements of Americans with no federal law in place governing data privacy.

The need for technology solutions not only to gauge the spread of the disease but also to identify and isolate the infected are fairly self-evident. The ideas and proposals for the use of new technologies range from systems that would draw data from diagnostic testing labs and hospitals to mobile phone-based apps that individuals would download voluntarily to identify themselves as infected to help others avoid contact.

Some of these new systems, experts say, could help bring the economy back faster. President Donald Trump has repeatedly sought to lift federal restrictions on social gatherings and reopen the U.S. economy. But public health officials have warned that resuming normal activities too soon could be dangerous and lead to new outbreaks.

By Thursday, at least 131,000 people had died from the coronavirus pandemic worldwide, as known infections exceeded 2 million. In the United States, deaths from the virus exceeded 28,000, with known infections totaling nearly 637,000.

In the absence of a nationwide surveillance, monitoring and containment system, it would be hard to resume normal economic activity in the United States, a group of health experts warned in a paper published last week.

“Developing these capabilities in each state and region will enable the U.S. to move beyond extreme and disruptive physical isolation measures,” according to the paper authored by Mark McClellan, Scott Gottlieb, Farzad Mostashari, Caitlin Rivers and Lauren Silvis. The paper was published by the Duke University’s Margolis Center for Health Policy, and the authors are public health experts from different institutions.

Gottlieb is a former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and has been advising the Trump administration in an informal capacity.

Establishing a national surveillance system would require “ongoing coordination between health care providers and state and local public health authorities,” with support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the authors wrote.