MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health (DOH) is working to improve its data collection system and provide “real-time” data release after a University of the Philippines (UP) report revealed errors in the government’s coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) data in April.
“Iyan po ang inaayos natin ngayon na maging actual (yung release), ‘yung labas (ng data) namin would be the date that the samples were received and inactivated sa proseso. Hindi sa date na nailabas ang resulta para magkaroon po tayo ng real-time,” DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in an interview on dzMM.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III earlier admitted that there were errors in the DOH data.
He, however, said that the errors pointed out by the UP Resilience Institute are “a nominal percentage of the whole data set and do not prejudice the overall interpretation of data and decision making.”
He also bared that the DOH and the WHO are working on a digital epidemiological surveillance information system “COVIDKAYA” to minimize encoding errors through automated data collection.