Thousands of COVID-19 tests that showed positive results still need to be validated.
“We have around 6,800 pa na kailangan pang i-validate natin na atin pong pagtatrabahuhan sa susunod na araw,” DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a press briefing.
Previously, DOH released the day’s new cases at 4 p.m. every day, along with the number of recoveries and number of deaths. Recently, they began classifying new cases into “fresh cases” and “late cases” as the agency caught up with testing backlogs. The spike in daily cases of COVID-19 was due to the late validation of positive tests from the accredited laboratories, and not necessarily because more people were getting infected.
On May 29, DOH uploaded the case tracker at 10 p.m. On May 30, DOH uploaded a case tracker with the wrong total number of cases. They corrected it and uploaded another photo with the correct numbers.
The recent spike in numbers and the mistake had people wondering if the numbers were accurate this whole time, and Vergeire had an answer: “Ang kagawaran naging transparent from the very start with our data.”
With the new application COVIDKaya digitizing the process of encoding cases, Vergeire said reporting and validating positive cases will be faster and easier.
The Philippines has 18,638 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of June 1, 4 p.m., but the DOH website logged over 23,000 positive cases on May 30.
Vergeire explained positive tests need validation from DOH’s Epidemiology Bureau. This tedious process is being done to avoid double records, repeat tests, or wrong entries. While over 23,000 cases were recorded, the EB must double-check and validate.
“Out of the 42 laboratories we have right now only 27 laboratories provided us with their line list,” she said. The EB needs this so-called line list in order to validate cases.
According to Vergeire, “fresh cases” represent individuals whose laboratory test results were released in the last 3 days, while “late cases” are for those released more than 3 days ago. Late cases were not validated on time, but are still included in the overall number of cases.
“So ang fresh cases po natin nanggagaling yan sa daily submission ng ating laboratories,” she said.
Earlier today, the DOH said they were no longer going to include “late cases” in their case tracker.