THE Department of Health (DOH) on Thursday admitted that the country was experiencing 12-day backlogs in the outcome of samples from Covid-19 tests.
During the hearing of the House Committee on Health, Dr. Alethea de Guzman from DOH-Epidemiology Bureau said the results reported now were taken about 12 days ago.
“We are experiencing challenges in ensuring that our data is real-time. We would like to achieve as close to real-time data as possible,” she said.
“But this is dependent on a number of things. First, is the availability of trained disease surveillance officers not just in our local government units (LGUs) but also in our reporting units such as medical facilities and hospitals,” she added.
According to De Guzman, the data gathering process of the DOH for Covid-19 cases is still paper-based.
“From the time of onset until the time we see the confirmation of these confirmed cases, the average day is around 12 days,” she said.
“A lot of it is the delay in turnaround time, which can range from 7 to 10 days while the additional delays would be the time for this data from our laboratory to become [available] to the [DOH] epidemiology bureau and LGU because much of the data is paper-based, so it has to go through several channels,” she added.
Good IT system
De Guzman said an effective information technology system will address these backlogs.
“If the local governments, regional, central offices will simultaneously receive the laboratory case data we will not be experiencing these delays,” she said.
With this, House Committee on Health chief Helen Tan asked the DOH to coordinate with IT experts to improve the data collection of the government.
“We need an IT system so that we can collect real data. The system that can be shared to the LGUs, help facilities and testing centers so that [our data is] real time. We will not achieve the right assessment if we do not have real time data,” she said.
For his part, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said the government is “aggressively addressing and leveling up our information system.”
He said the data from the Epidemiology Bureau is already migrating its data to the COVID KAYA.
COVID KAYA is a digital surveillance application developed with the help of the World Health Organization (WHO), where frontliners can input cases information directly into the DOH’s system.
As of 4 pm Thursday, the DOH reported 213 new cases of Covid-19. The total number of cases in the country is now at 13,434.
The DOH also announced 68 new recoveries, bringing the total number of recoveries to 3,000.
First wave, after all
Meanwhile, Duque clarified before the House that what the Philippines is experiencing is the first major wave of sustained community transmission.
“My statement was a casual expression of an epidemiological fact. Because the first wave was in January but only three cases. In the epidemiological sense, cases that show a rise or a crest and then a decrease constitute a wave, although a small wave,” he said.
“Then we had nothing for [the month of] February. Then this was followed by a bigger wave which is now what we consider as the first major wave of sustained community transmission. Either way it can be easily construed that where we are today is really the first major wave,” Duque added.
During the Senate virtual hearing on Wednesday, Duque stunned senators when he said the country is actually already facing the “second wave” of Covid-19, but it’s not the “second wave” that had been generally feared as the virus’s worse rebound from an easing of quarantines.
He said the first wave began in January, and the “second wave” was in late March, just shortly after the first community quarantine period was imposed.
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