Profiles of COVID-19 cases deleted from new DOH reports

The Department of Health-Center for Health Development Western Visayas (DOH-CHD 6) will no longer include the profiles of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the region in their updates as part of the centralization scheme of the health department.

At the regional level, the health department started excluding the profiles of the confirmed cases in bulletins issued on Friday, August 14, 2020.

According to Dr. Jocelyn Te, the move was part of the “uniformity” in terms of reporting as encouraged by the DOH Central Office.
“The Central Office has encouraged the regional level to not include the identification numbers and profiles of the Covid-19 cases for uniformity of reporting. It’s a new template for CHD’s. As you saw from our new case bulletins, wala na namon ginainclude ila patient numbers and their residences,” Te said in a phone interview on Sunday.

DOH-CHD 6 also patterned its case bulletin with the template provided by the Central Office as part of their centralization, according to Te.

Under their new reporting, the daily case bulletin only included the tally of the new cases per provinces. Profiles of the new confirmed cases such as their age, gender, quarantine status, and place of residence were not indicated.

Te admitted that the regional office was also not spared from the challenges and dilemmas in terms of reporting daily updates due to the surge of cases.

“We encountered dilemmas like sa encoding, kis-a lain ang gasulod or kis-a ga-double or galiwat-liwat entry. Compared to before na less than 30s lang ang cases, now madamo-damo na gid,” she said.
Despite this, Te said that the communication line from the molecular laboratories to the concerned local government units (LGUs) remain unhampered.

Upon confirming the positive results, Te said management of the testing laboratories in the region directly inform concerned LGUs about the positive results for contact tracing efforts.
“In terms of concerned municipalities, from the molecular lab almost simultaneous ang pag-inform sa LGU. Then they register and encode it to the system then amo na pag-reflect sa Regional Surveillance Unit (RESU). That is why kon mapansin niyo mas una ya ang LGU maka-reflect sang data and kami naulihi by almost a day,” she said.

Te added that the health department is also re-channeling the flow of information from the Covid-19 labs to the Municipal Health Offices (MHOs) to hasten the contact tracing efforts of the LGUs.
As of Saturday, COVID-19 cases in the region totaled 2,720 with 1,467 active cases, 1,217 recoveries and 36 deaths. (ERS)