Emilia vexler
09/23/2020 - 12:48
Clarín.com
Society
Numbers.
Behind every person killed by the coronavirus pandemic there is a story.
But, for the statistical curves, essential to understand the phenomenon, each death is a figure.
What if those numbers n
or are they accurate?
The
credibility
of the curve that
President Alberto Fernández shows in the slides.
According to official records, this Wednesday the country exceeded 13,950 deaths from covid-19.
But, according to the latest official report, the province of Buenos Aires had deaths
more than a month late
.
How many dead are there really?
Is there an under-registration?
Do the numbers that are published every day always have such a high margin of error?
The Buenos Aires Ministry of Health responded to
Clarín
on this issue.
In the part of September 22, a record of 429 new fatalities appears in the country;
of them, 276 (64% of the total) corresponded to the Buenos Aires territory.
That jump in the number of deaths in the Province was due to the fact that this Tuesday's report included deaths whose registration in the National Health Surveillance System (SNVS) was
delayed
.
"Only 48 deaths are from the last 24 hours, and the rest correspond to this
update
that yesterday (Tuesday) was made from the period from July 15 to August 31," they detailed from the Buenos Aires Ministry of Health .
"The Province of Buenos Aires is the only district that began monitoring since the beginning of the pandemic to check the number of deaths. In the update process, we found deaths that were confirmed as covid
post-mortem
and in the records of hospitals and clinics
had not been updated
. For this reason, this week they are going to finish loading, to avoid any type of under-registration of the pandemic, "they emphasize from Health of the Province.
Only on the lands of Governor Axel Kiciloff - the most inhabited in the country - were deceased national registries entered before August 1.
In the coming days, they warn,
more of these ancient dead will appear
.
The registry is made based on the report that each health center makes in the event of a death and it is the State that regulates how it should be done.
And why the delays?
Who makes the death curve so "anachronistic" today?
As this newspaper could learn from sources of Health of the Province, "the greatest delay occurs in private clinics and municipal hospitals in the interior of the Province."
This is not the first time that data lag loading has
distorted statistics
.
In August, particularly on the 14th of that month, for this reason, more than 200 deaths appeared in one day.
That was not "real".
Now it happened again.
Asked at that time about the delay, Claudio Belocopitt, president of Swiss Medical and part of the Argentine Union of Health Entities, was surprised.
And he did not hesitate to return the accusation: “It draws my attention because it always seems that
the private sector is to blame for things
.
They never give us a fuss, considering that we are a key sector, serving 70% of the pandemic.
I do not understand how these delays could occur ”.
In the most recent delays, the Buenos Aires government once again singled out the private sector.
Why is it so important that the death toll is loaded in real time?
The "official" pandemic is the one reported every day by the Government through the parts of the Ministry of Health of the Nation.
And among those figures, the number of deaths is one of the most relevant.
LGP
Look also
Controversy over the upload of data: there are delays of several weeks in updating the deaths from coronavirus
Coronavirus in Argentina: Nicolás Kreplak acknowledged delays in uploading data and raised doubts about the daily death toll
