As of March 3, the Ministry of Health will release statistics on cases and deaths from covid-19 on a weekly basis, the folder said. The new interval also applies to states and municipalities, which will send the numbers to the ministry once a week, on Mondays or Tuesdays.
The ministry will present the statistics on Tuesdays. In a note, the Ministry of Health justified that the strategy will be adopted “to optimize the work of surveillance teams in municipalities, states and ministries”. According to the folder, the measure was agreed upon at the second ordinary meeting of the Tripartite Intermanagers Commission (CIT), with the endorsement of the National Council of Health Secretaries (Conass) and the National Council of Municipal Health Secretaries (Conasems).
Conass reported that, on March 3, it will be one thousand days since the body, made up of state health secretaries, will update statistics uninterruptedly. The daily disclosure began after the Ministry of Health tried to change the way of counting cases at the beginning of the pandemic, in the last government.
According to the Ministry of Health, only the update period will increase. The population will continue to have open access to the covid-19 databases in the systems openDataSUS It is LocalizaSUS, in addition to the statistics published on the ministry’s website. The new schedule, the statement said, will facilitate the work of states by maintaining access to data in a detailed and optimized manner.
According to the director of the Department of Immunization of the Ministry of Health, Eder Gatti, professionals are still instructed to report cases and symptoms as quickly and timely as possible. Data will continue to be entered as quickly as possible into the systems. Only the compilation and disclosure of numbers will be weekly.
Of the 27 units of the Federation, informed the Ministry of Health, only nine send numbers of covid-19 statistics daily. The remaining 18 stopped updating data on weekends, due to lack of staff. As a result, the stats fluctuate throughout the week, with stats dropping on weekends and peaking on Tuesday and Wednesday. The discrepancy, so far, has been corrected by moving averages.
Check the new schedule
• Interruption of daily reports: March 3
• Proposed date for sending the first shipment of weekly data by states: March 6th to 7th (Monday and Tuesday)
• Publication of the first weekly report of covid-19 data on the monitoring panels of the Ministry of Health: March 7 (Tuesday)
