MANILA — Majority of those reported to have died from COVID-19 in the Philippines were only confirmed as coronavirus cases on the day of or after their demise, the ABS-CBN Investigative and Research Group (IRG) learned from government data.
MANILA — Majority of those reported to have died from COVID-19 in the Philippines were only confirmed as coronavirus cases on the day of or after their demise, the ABS-CBN Investigative and Research Group (IRG) learned from government data.
CONFIRMED COVID-19 CASES
Of the 1,011 deaths reported by the Department of Health as of June 8, there were 82 whose dates of death were not indicated, while 6 others seem to have erroneous data entries.
Of the 923 fatalities whose dates of death were indicated,672 (73%) were included in the list of confirmed COVID-19 cases on the day they died or days after that.
Forty-two (5%) of them were announced as COVID-19 cases on the day of their death, but more than half (52%) were confirmed 1 to 7 days after they died.
A total of 153 patients (17%) were only confirmed as COVID-19 cases more than a week after they died.
“The longest gap between death and date of public announcement as a confirmed COVID-19 case was 65 days,” the ABS-CBN IRG said in its report. This was a 68-year-old man from Pasig City who died on March 21 but was only announced as a confirmed case on May 25.
ABS-CBN IRG released its report as the DOH and its accredited laboratories continue to deal with testing backlogs and validation delays.
Such delays prompted the DOH to re-classify its new cases into “fresh cases” to refer to patients whose test results were released and validated in the last 3 days, and “late cases” to refer to patients whose test results were released much earlier but were validated only recently.
DELAYED DEATH ANNOUNCEMENT
Besides the delay in validating the patients as confirmed COVID-19 cases, there were also delays in announcing their deaths.
