Two new COVID cases in Grayson Co. Embry says about no longer releasing age and gender of victims, ‘… it’s really no one’s business …’

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The Grayson County Health Department (GCHD) has offered a coronavirus (COVID-19) update on the department’s Facebook page.

GCHD Director Josh Embry reported two new cases of the virus have been diagnosed in the county since his last update on Thursday, July 23. The new cases increase Grayson County’s COVID-19 victim count to 171 since the onset of the pandemic.

With those cases, the county now has had 28 new cases of the virus reported since Wednesday, July 8. This after only one new case of the virus was reported in the county between June 16 and July 7.

Eleven of the cases are considered “active,” Embry said, with zero patients currently hospitalized and 149 victims recovered.

The county’s death toll remains at 11.

Embry also discussed the reason the health department is no longer releasing the gender and age of COVID-19 victims.

“The first reason is because, unfortunately, we started to notice that people in the community – some people – took that information and they were trying to use it to find out the patients that tested positive; their names,” Embry said. “And it’s really no one’s business on who in particular tested positive. We just need to know the numbers and the data and to see how widespread is it in the county. So, to protect the confidentiality and the safety of those patients, we stopped releasing that information. Now, we’re within our legal right to do that (release age and gender of COVID-19 patients). Other counties were doing it as well, some of them continue to do it. I have chosen not to do it to protect privacy.”

By Ken Howlett, News Director

Contact Ken at ken@k105.com