The COVID-19 response team of the University of the Philippines (UP) revealed some discrepancies in the Department of Health’s (DOH) data as gender mismatch and patients declared dead but lived the following day.
UP Resilience Institute on Tuesday showed in a Facebook post the errors they saw from looking at the official DOH data from April 24 to April 25.
They said 45 cases had changed sex from male to female or vice versa, while 75 became older or younger overnight.
“Cases were reclassified either to another city or a completely imaginary city (i.e. a barangay or district) like what happened to patients from City of Manila),” UP Resilience Institute said.
“A patient who reportedly died on April 24 is no longer dead the following day,” it added.
The team also highlighted 18 patients have no information on their place of residence. DOH also uses several methods to connote dates, making it difficult to keep track of the number of infections, they added.
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Discrepancies in DOH data
“There are other troubling anomalies in recent data drops of DOH. For example, 18 cases no longer have data on residence in the April 25 update. On the same date, the recovery dates of two cases were either missing or changed. One patient who reportedly died on April 24 is no longer dead the following day,” the UP COVID-19 response team said.
“These lapses may seem small relative to the total size of data contained in the daily updates, but they have significant implications on the reliability of our scientific analyses on COVID-19. Patient case data is the keystone for effective and insightful metrics and analysis,” it added.
The team said they understand DOH could only reveal limited data because of the prevailing Data Privacy Law. But they said there are other ways the government could share information without violating the law.
“For example, identifiers, such as employment information or specific addresses may be removed, but variables such as the onset of symptoms, exposure history, comorbidities, and whether they were medical front-liners or not are key inputs for modelers and statisticians to map the progress of our fight against COVID-19,” they claimed.
As of May 12, DOH reported there are now 11,350 cases (264 new cases), 25 new deaths (751 total), and 107 new recoveries (2,106 total).