DOH: COVID-19 data issues raised by UP Resilience Institute ‘nominal’

The Department of Health (DOH) on Wednesday said the data issues raised by the UP Resilince Institute did not compromise the whole data set for COVID-19 that is being used by a lot of stakeholders for decision-making amid the pandemic.

"We assure the public that the issues raised are a nominal percentage of the whole dataset, and does not prejudice the overall interpretation of data and decision making," it said in a statement released by the Office of Health Secretary Francsico Duque III.

"Data is continuously rectified the moment we identify any issue, including but not limited to date formatting inconsistencies, case classification, and proper identification of residence," it added.

The data errors found in the April 24 and 25 data drops that were mentioned in the policy note released by UP have been resolved on April 26, according to the DOH.

Nevertheless, it thanked the UP Resilince Institute for the feedback.

"Moving forward, we will include more details on the specific rows that have changed from the previous day due to corrections," it said.

Further, the DOH said that as part of improving its data collection and reporting systems, it will roll out COVIDKAYA, a new digital epidemiological surveillance information system which will automate the process and lessen encoding errors.

The said system has been developed in coordination with the World Health Organization Country Office, it added.

Earlier this week, UP experts pointed out errors in DOH's COVID-19 database.

Several senators expressed concern as they stressed that data accuracy is key in decision-making amid the COVID-19 situation. — RSJ, GMA News