Wow, Ministry Of Health Admits COVID-19 Death Rate Spike Due To Data Accumulation

Illustration of a COVID-19 funeral. (VOI)

JAKARTA - The spike in the number of COVID-19 deaths in Indonesia in the last three weeks was triggered by the accumulation of unreported cases, the Ministry of Health (Kemenkes) said.

"Death data has accumulated dates or weeks, even several months before. It is not appropriate if it is used as an indicator of current real conditions," said Spokesperson for COVID-19 Vaccination of the Ministry of Health, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, as quoted by Antara, Wednesday, August 11.

With this evaluation, said Nadia, the Ministry of Health then decided to issue the death toll of COVID-19 cases that had accumulated based on the previous date or week in the assessment of the pandemic situation.

"The goal is to avoid bias in the assessment. While continuing to improve this data, the regions will finish," he said.

Meanwhile, in the last three weeks, the Ministry of Health has released the number of deaths due to COVID-19 which tends to be high. The provinces of West Java, Central Java and East Java have the largest contribution to the death rate at the national level.

Separately, Ministry of Health Expert Panji Fortuna Hadisoemarto said based on an analysis of the Ministry of Health's National All Record (NAR) data, it was found that the reporting of deaths by regions was not 'realtime' and was an accumulation of previous months.

To note, NAR is a big data system for laboratory records in handling COVID-19 which is managed by the Ministry of Health. Based on the COVID-19 case report on Tuesday (10/8), Panji said, of the 2,048 deaths reported, most were not the death toll on that date, but the week before.

Even 10.7 percent of them came from positive patient cases that had been recorded in NAR for more than 21 days but had just been confirmed and reported that the patient had died, said Panji.

"The city of Bekasi, for example, reported yesterday (10/8) of the 397 reported deaths, 94 percent of which were not the death rates on that day, but the reported death rates from July were 57 percent and June and previously 37 percent. Then the remaining 6 percent is a recapitulation of deaths in the first week of August," he explained in a written statement.

Panji added that another example is Central Kalimantan, where 61 percent of the 70 reported deaths are active cases that have been active for more than 21 days, but have just updated their status.