Acting ACT Chief Health Officer Vanessa Johnston defends ACT Health's approach to releasing information

Dr Vanessa Johnston rejected any suggestion that health authorities were withholding information after The Canberra Times revealed this week that health officials blocked the release of COVID-19 patient comorbidity data and then misled the public about the reason why.

Dr Johnston said Canberrans "absolutely had a right to know" about the territory's COVID situation, but she said the release of information about a small number of people was not in the public interest. She also said health officials were barred from providing the information due to legislation.

She said authorities had to balance their obligations under the Privacy Act and the Public Health Act, essentially a matter of balancing the rights of individuals in hospital versus the right of the public to know.

"It's what we have to balance every single day. It's not just with COVID-19, it's with all notifiable diseases, we are always having to be really cognisant, particularly when it is important for the public to know about something that's highly transmissible and could cause severe disease versus the right for that individual to not be identified," she said.

"It's not to say that you or I might identify that individual, but those that know them - their family, their friends or care providers - might identify them, and that individual hasn't consented."

Documents released under freedom of information showed that during January's Omicron wave, decision-makers within ACT Health did not want Canberrans to see the kind of detail about people's vaccine status and underlying health conditions regularly provided in other states.

Officials withheld information on underlying health conditions because of unspecified privacy reasons, but said publicly in February it was because they didn't "routinely collect that data".

This was despite health officials saying information around patient comorbidities was "an important part of the picture". Health officials provided information on the vaccination status of COVID-19 patients who had died and had been admitted into intensive care, but said privately that you could not "make any inferences about lack of boosters and subsequent death".

Dr Johnston was asked whether there were any policy documents or guidance for ACT Health officials around what information could and could not be released. She pointed to the Privacy Act and the Public Health Act, but not specific parts of the acts.

More information was released about COVID-19 patients in Canberra hospitals during the Delta lockdown, but Dr Johnston said this level of detail was no longer in the public interest.

"At a certain point in time, previously when we provided more detailed information during the Delta outbreak [about people] who were not vaccinated, that was definitely in the public interest because there was real evidence that people needed that information to make the choice to get vaccinated," she said.

"We now have a situation where 98 per cent of our eligible population are fully vaccinated, so we're going to see and we are seeing and reporting a high proportion of hospitalised patients who are either double-vaccinated or boostered, because that is what happens in a highly vaccinated population. Ultimately, some of those people, because they have comorbidities or because they're older, will end up with severe disease."

Dr Johnston also expressed concern about the territory's booster rate of 72 per cent, saying this needed to be higher. She said information about the booster status of hospitalisations and deaths could be released as part of a group but did not commit to publishing this on a regular basis.

The information about health officials blocking information came to light through internal emails relating to a media inquiry from The Canberra Times. Information was sought on vaccination statuses and comorbidities on January 24, however a response was not given until February 3.

But Dr Johnston dismissed the suggestion that it was a "drama" to publish the information.

"I think what we were doing was having a discussion and a reflection on balancing the rights of those individuals who are providing that information and also the robustness of the data regarding the comorbidity and what assumptions could be made from the data that we didn't feel was reliable at that stage," she said.

"We are constantly reviewing what data we release in the public domain and as part of that we can look to how we improve on that."

The suggestion was posed to Dr Johnston that the government's information policy said it was unlawful for public servants to take into account whether information could be misinterpreted when deciding to release the information.

"My recollection of the documents and the discussions I understood took place at the time were less about how the public interpret it and more about how we interpret it," she said.

"If we go back to the comorbidity and palliative care issue that was raised, and we're not confident in the reliability and robustness of that, we're not confident in how we should interpret that."

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She claimed she had received feedback, including from people on the street, who had told her they felt well informed.

"I would argue that they do know, and Canberrans have been telling us consistently, either through social media, through our Your Say surveys, to people coming up to me on the street, that they have been incredibly well informed during this," Dr Johnston said.

Dr Johnston also rejected any claims that information had been withheld from Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith.

The freedom-of-information documents revealed Ms Stephen-Smith wanted the public to know information about deaths that had occurred in palliative care, but this information could not be provided as the only information they had was "anecdotal".

"Up until recently we met with the minister daily. She knows the ins and outs of our operation like I don't think any other health minister would," Dr Johnston said.

"She's an incredibly smart, capable woman who wants to know the details, and so if she asks for it she gets it.

"We will have discussions about what should be reliably released and what we can reliably say about hand-on-heart data we can release.

"We have these frank and fearless discussions, and that's the role of public servants - to put it to ministers that these are the limitations of the data on this particular request at this particular time."

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