DoH to change how it reports COVID-19 cases
THE Department of Health (DoH) said that it will be changing the way coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases are reported to the public, saying that it will identify those that are “fresh” and those that came from “delayed reporting.”
“Kung noon ay pinapakita namin ay simpleng bilang lang ng mga pumapasok at na-va-validate na kaso ng epidemiology bureau, simula po ngayon ay hahatiin na po namin ang numero upang ipakita kung ilan sa mga numerong ito ay fresh or newly validated case kada araw at ihahawalay na rin po namin kung ilan naman ang late o nagmula lamang sa delayed reporting,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario S. Vergeire said during a virtual briefing on Friday.
(While before we would report the simple count of all the cases that came in and had been validated by the epidemiology bureau, starting now we will divide the number to show how many are fresh or newly validated cases each day, and will separate those that came in late or are from delayed reporting.)
She said that out of the 539 new infections reported on Thursday, only 109 were fresh cases which meant they had been reported in the last three days. The remaining 430 came from “delayed reporting” of cases from the past week.
“Ang balanse na mahigit kumulang na 400 ay mga late cases o mga kaso na ang mga resulta ay lumabas noong nakaraan pang linggo (The balance of more or less 400 were late cases or cases whose results had come out the week before),” Ms. Vergeire said, adding that the reporting of cases depends on how early hospitals or local government units submit their data.
She also said that the daily update of COVID-19 deaths does not necessarily mean that patients died on the same day it was reported.
“Sa mga namatay, 17 ang nireport natin kahapon. Pero hindi ibig-sabihin nito, kahapon lamang sila namatay. Kung ang pagbabasehan ay date of death at hindi death reported, naitala ang pinaka maraming namatay noong March 31 kung saan 30 ang namatay,” Ms. Vergeire said. (We reported 17 deaths yesterday. But this does not mean that they all died just yesterday. If we base things on the date of death and not on the death reported, we could see that the most died on March 31 when 30 people died.)
The release of the daily COVID-19 case bulletin has been delayed in order to validate the number of cases. The DoH usually releases the bulletin in the afternoon.
As of Thursday, the health department reported 15,558 COVID-19 cases in the country, 921 of whom have died while 3,598 have recovered.
Globally, the virus has sickened 5.9 million and killed about 362,000 people, according to the Worldometers website, citing various sources including data from the World Health Organization. — Genshen L. Espedido
