DOH eyes meeting with OCTA group to reconcile COVID-19 death rate

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health (DOH) said Saturday it intends to meet with the OCTA Research to discuss their different computations on the case fatality rate (CFR) for COVID-19 cases.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the DOH has already reached out to the interdisciplinary research group to inquire on how it came up with a 5.4 percent CFR for Metro Manila in the past two weeks, when the DOH pegs the CFR in the region to be at only 1.46 percent.

“We intend to meet with them with our experts and our epidemiologists para magkaroon ng (so that we can have a) unified messaging,” Vergeire said during the Laging Handa public briefing.

Vergeire added that the DOH’s computation for CFR is based on the guidelines set by the World Health Organization.

However, she noted that there are some differing opinions in the field of epidemiology, one of which is in computing the CFR.

On Friday, the health official explained that the DOH computes the CFR “based on the number of deaths over the number of confirmed cases.”

“Iba-iba ang ginagamit na numerator and denominator (The numerator and denominator being used sometimes differ) and that is something that is commonly heard from epidemiologists,” she said.

But according to Dr. Butch Ong of the OCTA team, their researchers only use the DOH data as basis for their computations.

“The DOH and OCTA, we are both working on the same data set, and siguro ang pagkakaiba lang (maybe the difference) is the averaging of the data,” Ong said in the same briefing.

“Siguro it’s in some of the mathematical assumptions, in some of the mathematical elements na ginagamit ng OCTA at DOH (that are used by OCTA and DOH). But both of us are working to advise on policy, to keep people informed,” he added.

Data from the DOH as of Friday showed that Metro Manila has recorded 5,912 deaths out of the 407,096 COVID-19 cases that were so far detected in the region.

Nationwide, the COVID-19 death toll is 15,738 out of the total 914,971 confirmed cases. There are 193,476 active cases in the country based on latest figures from the health department.

EDV