San Juan Mayor Zamora questions DOH data on number of COVID-19 cases

San Juan City Mayor Francis Zamora on Thursday said the data of the Department of Health on the number of COVID-19 cases in local government units showed some discrepancies.

Interviewed on GMA News’ Unang Balita, Zamora opposed the report of the DOH claiming that San Juan City is among the eight cities in Metro Manila with increasing trend over the past two weeks.

“It’s really because of their reporting system ‘yung tinatawag na COVID KAYA reporting system. Sapagkat minsan hindi nave-verify nang mabuti ang datos that is why nagkakaroon ng discrepancies,” he said.

(It’s really because of their reporting system called COVID KAYA reporting system. Because sometimes, the data are not being verified thoroughly that is why there are discrepancies.)

Zamora said the DOH has to reconcile with local government units as many of them are questioning the data of the department.

Based on the city government’s data, Zamora said San Juan only has 75 cases as of Wednesday. According to him, the DOH data showed a higher number of infections.

In response, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire explained that the discrepancies among national, regional, and local COVID-19 data stem from the different cutoff times for data collection.

“The DOH Epidemiology Bureau together with regional and local Epidemiology and Surveillance Units receive the line list results from labs at 11:59 p.m. every day,” she said.

“Rest assured that the DOH is continuously doing measures to ensure the provision of more accurate and near real-time data to guide the government's data-driven COVID-19 response,” Vergeire added.

In 2020, the DOH had been criticized for its supposed errors in data.

The UP COVID-19 Pandemic Response Team released Policy Note No. 6 which pointed out the “alarming patient-level inconsistencies, if not gross errors” in the DOH's database of cases.

Several senators expressed concern over the “prevailing data issues” supposedly hounding the DOH COVID-19 tracker.

Despite the criticism, members of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) stood firm on the accuracy of its data. — Joviland Rita and Julia Mari Ornedo/RSJ, GMA News