DOH launches website that tracks COVID-19 developments in PH

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III. INQUIRER file photo / MARIANNE BERMUDEZ

MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Health (DOH) has launched a website intended to track developments in the country’s fight against COVID-19, including the number of infected individuals and the hospitals treating the patients.

DOH said on Monday that the new COVID-19 tracker was created to promote “transparency” and accountability.

“The revamped tracker features additional information on the epidemiology of COVID-19 in the country, COVID-19 testing, health facilities, and availability of personal protective equipment (PPEs),” the department explained.

“The public can now view data on the laboratory testing capacities of the DOH accredited laboratories including the total number of tests and unique individuals tested. Likewise, the public can now have a snapshot of our health system’s capacity in responding to the pandemic based on data collected from the DOH DataCollect application,” they added.

The tracker can be accessed through the DOH website, which is at https://www.doh.gov.ph/covid19tracker.

Currently, the tracker provides several features, like taking a look at the number of confirmed cases either per region or per city in the country.  It also shows the number of patients still under validation, the testing capacity of health centers nationwide, and beds and hospitals available.

However, DOH Secreatary Francisco Duque III himself admitted that the COVID-19 tracker website still lacks a lot of information, as data from only 550 hospitals were included.

“The new COVID-19 tracker is not perfect and we hope to add more information in the succeeding days, but it is our fervent hope that this responds to the information needs and the call for transparency from our citizens,” Duque said.

“Right now, health facility data is only limited to around 550 reporting hospitals and infirmaries so we call on our hospitals to submit information through our DataCollect App to help us protect our healthcare workers in beating COVID-19,” he added.

According to DOH, the application was made through the help of epidemiologist Nel Jason Haw and data science consulting firm Thinking Machines.  Haw, DOH said, is a faculty at the Health Sciences and Development Studies Programs of the
Ateneo de Manila University.

The DOH said that Thinking Machine, on the other hand, is one of the leading data science companies in the country.

As of now, the entire Luzon is still under an enhanced community quarantine due to the rising COVID-19 cases. DOH officials said that there are 4,932 infected patients — 315 of which have already died while at least 242 have recovered.

Worldwide, over 1.8 million individuals have been infected, while 114,063 have died from the disease and 421,500 have recovered from it.

Edited by JPV