While the Pennsylvania Department of Health is dealing with a crisis as a third-party company that conducted contact tracing was discovered to have mishandled unauthorized data with residents’ personal information, Bucks County officials said residents who went through its contact tracing program were not impacted by the problem.
“We store all of our own data on the county’s secure network, and don’t outsource the work,” said Bucks County Health Department Director Dr. David Damsker.
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Bucks County is one of six county and four municipal health departments in the state and has authority countywide. The state health department offers certain services and resources to counties and provides coverage for areas that don’t have a local health department.
The state’s contact tracing efforts were focused on areas without local health departments.
Barry Ciccocioppo, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, confirmed to reporters Thursday that as many as 72,000 Pennsylvanians had their contact information, COVID-19 diagnosis, and demographic data placed in an unauthorized database with lack of security by contact tracing contractor Insight Global. The vendor’s problem did not include the state’s secure health database and the state’s COVID Alert PA app.
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Since the pandemic began, Bucks County has conducted contact tracing for thousands of people who had COVID-19 contacts. Late last year, the county scaled down their contact tracing efforts and targeted them on certain types of cases, including at schools and long-term care facilities.
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