The Department of Health said, Saturday, July 4, it will develop a new format of reporting COVID-19 infection cases to the public to avoid stoking fear and panic when the agency reports a high number of cases.
In an interview, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire told Dobol B sa News that DOH has developed a new format on how to report to the public as it plans to trash the breaking down cases into “fresh” and “late.”
“Maaring sa isang linggo ay mailabas natin ‘yan kung saan hindi na namin ilalabas ang late at fresh cases. Maglalabas na lang tayo ng additional cases per a day.”
As the Health department plans to discard the old method, the DOH official said that the agency will present cases using a graph “kung saan makikita roon ang mga nangyari for the past three days.” Vergeire hopes that this new method will allow the agency to slowly transition into reporting fresh cases alone.
The official also appealed for the public’s understanding on the DOH’s changing of format in presenting COVID-19 cases.
“Unang una kailangan maintindihan ng mga tao that the situation is evolving. Nag-umpisa tayo na wala tayong kaalam alam sa virus na ito at nakakakalap na tayo ng maraming ebidensya na para ating ma-improve ang ating sistema,” she said.
(First of all people need to understand that the situation is evolving. We started with no knowledge of this virus and now, we’ve gathered a lot of evidence that can help improve our system)
“Hindi po perpekto ang sistema ng ating kagawaran ng kalusugan nag umpisa tayo sa mano mano. Ngayon, automated system hindi rin perpekto dahil maraming operational bugs na kailangan i-trouble shoot sa day-to-day operations,” she added.
(Our health department’s system is not perfect, so we had to improvise. Today, our automated systems are still imperfect because many operational bugs need trouble shooting in day-to-day operations)
The Health official said the agency is continuously trying to improve their system to report accurate data.