Balancing privacy and public health protection
Why can't you tell us where a patient lives, or where they have been?
We always need to balance patient privacy with the need to protect the public's health. In some instances, we may need to be specific about the location of a cluster of COVID cases, but in most cases, issuing isolation orders for the COVID patient and quarantining their close contacts is adequate to contain the spread.
We have community transmission in Shasta County, so it should be assumed that people could contract it anywhere. Sometimes our communicable disease team can determine where a patient became infected, like if they were in contact with another person who had tested positive, and other times they can't. (From Shasta County Public Health)