Senate President Vicente Sotto III hit Health Secretary Francisco Duque III for downplaying on Wednesday the discrepancies discovered in its COVID-19 data.
Sotto was not convinced with Duque’s statements that the data errors raised by experts in the University of the Philippines (UP) are only less than one percent of the Department of Health’s (DoH) overall data and that these do not affect their interpretation and decision-making.
“On the contrary, I think it’s a very significant implication kasi napakahalaga ng statistic or ng data as far as reliability of our scientific analysis is concerned,” Sotto said in a video conference with reporters Wednesday afternoon.
“Hindi pwedeng sabihing maliit. Maliit nga, mali pa rin. Maliit or malaki, mali is mali so kailangan ingat tayo diyan,” he added.
The DoH, he said, should learn from its mistakes and make sure that this would not be repeated.
He pointed out that such pieces of information are crucial for policymakers in coming up with decisions to address the COVID-19 pandemic.
Senators earlier expressed concern over the discrepancies in the DoH’s data.
The UP Resilience Institute earlier flagged “alarming errors in patient-level” and “mismatch” between the figures of the DoH and local government units.
The UP experts noted changes in genders and ages in several cases within a day. At least 516 cases were also “reclassified either to another city or a completely imaginary city.”
In a press briefing in Malacañang, Duque said the DoH “already [took] note of the data errors” as well as other “inconsistencies communicated by private citizens.” (Vanne Terrazola)