Madras HC junks plea for disclosing identities of COVID-19 patients

A special bench of justices M Sathyanarayanan and M Nirmal Kumar dismissed the public interest litigation petition which also sought a direction to the Tamil Nadu government to monitor COVID-19 patients for at least three months after recovery.

The petitioner contended that considering the nature of the contagious disease and its impact on public, unless the identity of affected persons was revealed it would be impossible for others to know whether they have come across an infected person and decide on self quarantining them.

The COVID-19 bulletins issued by the Tamil Nadu government only mentions the city/town, age, gender and primary or secondary contact details of patients.