Health Authorities Issue Guidelines: "No Disclosure of Gender or Age in Confirmed Cases' Movement Paths"

[Asia Economy Reporter Seulgina Jo] Going forward, local governments must not disclose personal information such as gender or age when announcing the movement paths of confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) within their regions, according to guidelines issued by health authorities.

The Central Disease Control Headquarters (CDCH) announced on the 9th that, following the revision of the "Infectious Disease Prevention and Control Act" (Infectious Disease Control Act) last month, which emphasizes personal information protection, it has prepared guidelines for disclosing information such as the movement paths of COVID-19 confirmed cases and distributed them to local governments.

This measure comes in response to concerns raised over privacy violations due to the inclusion of identifiable information in disclosed confirmed case data or the disclosure of movement paths by time slots.

The new guidelines minimize privacy infringements related to personal information such as gender, age, nationality, residence below the eup/myeon/dong level, and workplace names. Regarding movement path disclosure, the previous method of listing places visited by confirmed cases in chronological order has been changed to disclose the exposure time based on the places visited. Previously, if confirmed case A was disclosed to have visited B Mart and C Restaurant in chronological order, now the times when patient A visited B Mart and C Restaurant are disclosed instead.

Additionally, it is a principle not to disclose place names if all contacts at the location can be identified.

However, if the places and means of transportation used by confirmed cases are not specified, it may cause harm to many people. Therefore, for buildings, specific floors, room numbers, store names, and time slots are specified, and for public transportation, route numbers, line and car numbers, boarding and alighting locations, and times are disclosed.

Jeong Eun-kyung, head of the CDCH, said, "Please understand the purpose of the revised Infectious Disease Control Act, which strengthens personal information protection when disclosing information such as confirmed cases' movement paths," adding, "We will continue to monitor compliance with the scope of information disclosure and deletion timing in cooperation with the Personal Information Protection Commission."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.