New COVID-19 cases lowest in 2 months but DOH points to technical issue

The Department of Health (DOH) announced 3,083 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, May 23, but the relatively low number was due to a technical issue in the department’s case reporting system.

Sunday’s figure was the lowest in over two months or since March 10, when 2,886 infections were reported.

However, the DOH explained that some case data from its COVID-19 Document Repository System (CDRS) were not included in COVIDKaya and in the case bulletin on Sunday afternoon. COVIDKaya is the department’s case and contact-tracing reporting platform.

The DOH also mentioned “simultaneous updates being made” in COVIDKaya as the reason behind the low number.

The department said the COVIDKaya technical team is investigating and addressing the issue.

This technical issue was similar to what happened on March 31, when “a number of laboratory line lists uploaded via CDRS…were not pushed to COVIDKaya.” The 3,709 cases affected by this issue were then added to the tally on April 2.

Sunday’s new cases bring the Philippines’ total caseload to 1,179,812.

The DOH also reported 38 new deaths, pushing the death toll to 19,951. Meanwhile, recoveries are up by 6,756, raising total recoveries to 1,109,226.

Of the total cases, 50,635 are active.

Three labs were not able to submit their data in time for Sunday’s case bulletin.

The health department added that it removed 10 duplicates, including 8 recoveries, from the total case count. It also said there were 1,478 cases “deactivated” after regional and city epidemiology and surveillance units tagged them as duplicates.

In addition, 25 cases previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation. – Rappler.com