Covid-19 figure discrepancies corrected: DOH

FILE: Health Secretary Francisco Duque III (Photo: Senate of the Philippines/Facebook)

MANILA – Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Francisco Duque III on Wednesday said the discrepancies in the figures on the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) data represent a “nominal percentage of the whole data set” and have been corrected.

“We assure the public that the issues raised are less than 1 percent, maliit pa isang porsiyento (small percentage) of the whole data set, and does not prejudice the overall interpretation of data and decision making. We continuously rectify the moment we identify any issue, for example including inconsistencies in the formatting of the date, case classification, and proper identification of residence,” Duque said in a press briefing at the Malacañang Palace.

Duque made the statement in response to the concerns raised by the UP Covid-19 Pandemic Response Team in its Policy Note No. 6, dated May 8, 2020 which referred to the data errors found in the April 24 and 25 data drops.

Earlier, the DOH has resolved the issue and other inconsistencies communicated by private citizens through covidtracker@doh.gov.ph on April 26.

“We very much appreciate the UP Resilience Institute for raising their concerns… Nevertheless, the DOH remains committed to transparency, and we welcome feedback from the expert community. Moving forward, we will include more details on the specific rows that have changed from the previous day due to corrections,” Duque said.

The government uses the department’s Covid-19 data in its policies and decision-making on community quarantine strategies nationwide.

While the crisis demands existing systems be improved and scaled out in real-time, Duque said building of high-quality data systems usually takes a month.

“The Health department is currently rolling out a new digital epidemiological surveillance information system “COVIDKAYA” developed with the World Health Organization Country Office. This new system automates several data collection processes which are expected to minimize encoding errors,” he added.