Major changes in how MOH reports daily Covid-19 data

 

COVID-19 | The Health Ministry has undertaken drastic changes in reporting daily Covid-19 data.

This article is a preliminary documentation of key changes and may be updated in the future.

More than one gatekeeper

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah has been the main source of information on how the pandemic was developing in the country.

He started off with very detailed daily press conferences which eventually became less frequent in late 2020 and a rarity by this year.

All key data points were communicated through his daily press releases.

On Sept 11, Noor Hisham's press release did not mention two key data - the number of deaths attributed to Covid-19 that was reported and the number of active Covid-19 cases.

This information, he said, would now be served by the Health Ministry's new CovidNow website.

Data will come a bit later

Noor Hisham's daily press releases, for much of this year, are usually released between 6pm and 7.30pm.

Since Sept 11, the number of daily Covid-19 deaths and active cases was released at 11.59pm through the CovidNow website.

This means that for most newspapers, they can only report these two key statistics a day late.

How MOH reports death has changed

Up until Sept 11, recent deaths attributed to Covid-19 had followed a linear upward trend.

However, a new set of data has been released on the Health Ministry's Github page, which tabulated deaths according to the actual date of death, instead of when a death was classified as was the previous practice.

When looking at the actual date of death, deaths due to Covid-19 are trending down for most regions.

According to a media briefing yesterday, Health Ministry officers explained that moving to dynamic and near real-time reporting format was a more accurate indicator.

Moreover, the reason why the old format showed a record number recently was because of a concerted effort to clear backlogs. Malaysiakini will explore "the backlog" in a future article.

Deaths according to vaccination status is now public

The Health Ministry has released very granular, yet non-identifiable data on victims who died of Covid-19.

This dataset also includes vaccination dates, vaccine brands and the actual day of death.

On Sept 10, Malaysiakini explored the dataset in this article. The article does not draw conclusions on the efficacy of any vaccine.

ICU data expanded, AEFI revealed

Up until last early late August, Noor Hisham's daily press release only specified the number of "confirmed" Covid-19 patients in intensive care.

Now, the CovidNow website also takes into account "patients under investigation" - patients who are not declared Covid-19 positive but are displaying related symptoms - into the statistics.

The Health Ministry has also released adverse events following immunisation (AEFI) data, which logs the number of people who have reported severe side effects after receiving the Covid-19 vaccines. - Mkini

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Editor's note: This article may be updated over time as more clarity emerges.