Health Ministry: Spike in Covid-19 Deaths Number Due to Data Input

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Health Ministry disclosed that the limited number of health workers who are tasked to input Covid-19 data resulted in the accumulation of non-real-time data, leading to the spike in the number of daily deaths in the last three weeks. 

“We will continue to monitor the anomalous spike in the death rate like this for at least the next two weeks,” said the ministry’s spokesperson Widyawati in a written statement on Wednesday, August 11.

The ministry’s expert staff Panji Fortuna Hadisoemarto explained that based on the ministry’s National All Record (NAR), most of the 2,048 deaths reported on August 10, for example, were not submitted on that date or the previous week.

“Even 10.7 percent of them came from data of positive cases that have been recorded in NAR for more than 21 days but have just been confirmed and submitted,” Panji said.

He cited more examples, Bekasi logged 397 deaths on August 10 with 94 percent of them not occurring on that day. “It was an accumulated data from July at 57 percent and from June and the previous month at 37 percent. The remaining 6 percent is the recapitulation of death data in the first week of August,” Panji explained.

In addition to issues on the data of Covid-19 daily deaths, Panji said the number of daily active cases was also problematic. More than 50,000 of the current active cases have not been updated for over 21 days.

Read: WHO Ex-Director Comments on Covid-19 Death Data Excluded from PPKM Assessment

DEWI NURITA