By Christine Fabro
The Department of Health (DOH) clarified that the “zero” COVID-19-related death it reported on Friday (Sept. 24) was due to a glitch in its digital surveillance application COVID-Kaya.
DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire explained in a Laging Handa public briefing on Saturday (Sept. 25) that the Health department gathered the data for yesterday’s COVID-19 case update manually via the COVID Documents Repository System (CDRS) as the data collating system COVID-Kaya encountered some technical difficulties.
“Ang ginagawa lang natin para makapag-report tayo ng mga kaso ay nag-ma-manual po kami, kinukuha namin manually sa CDRS iyon pong mga positibong kaso,” Vergeire said.
However, the CDRS does not supply the real-time status of individuals who tested positive for COVID-19.
“Pero sa CDRS po kasi hindi natin makikita iyong status noong mga individuals kaya wala ho tayong deaths na nai-report kahapon,” she added.
Vergeire said the case report lapse was due to storage issues, which are now being addressed by the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT).
“Ang atin pong COVID-Kaya system ay nagkakaroon tayo uli ng issue sa storage and the Department of Information and Communications Technology, ang DICT, na siyang namamahala po nito ay inaayos po nila sa ngayon. Kapag hindi po gumagana ang ating COVID-KAYA at hindi tayo makakuha ng mga datos dito, ang nangyayari po, hindi natin nakukuha iyong mga specific details katulad ng mga deaths,” Vergeire said.
COVID-Kaya is a digital surveillance application developed along with the World Health Organization and was further adopted by the National Inter-Agency Task Force as “the convergent Epidemiological Surveillance system for COVID-19” in all healthcare and testing facilities. – bny
