EXCLUSIVE specialists, on the COVID-19 authorities reports: A total mess, lost control of the epidemic

After the Strategic Communication Group (GCS) pointed out how to work behind the daily reports, especially in “new cases not assigned by counties”, a doctor and a biostatistician say that the data in the columns of new cases assigned in Los Counties do not provide a rigorous scientific picture of the current evolution of the epidemic, and the consequence is seen directly in the way authorities take action.

The “truth” contacted Octavian Jurma, a biostatistician, and Gabriel Diaconu, a psychiatrist, to comment on how authorities are handling the epidemic. GCS yesterday announced 8,262 new cases of people infected by the new coronavirus. In addition, 186 deaths were recorded in the last 24 hours. 1,174 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 are admitted to ATI.

The “key” to the whole problem lies in the central authorities’ decision to classify new COVID-19 cases according to the bulletin’s addresses, not where they actually live.

The system behind GCS daily reports

A government source revealed to Adevărul how the system behind the GCS daily reports works step by step. It turns out that, every day, there are thousands of “new cases not assigned by counties” that are waiting, sometimes more than a few days, for the results of the epidemiological investigation, and then they are assigned as “new” to the counties from which come from. In this way, the authorities obtain the total number of infections nationwide every day, but when it comes to the allocation of areas, this process is delayed by the investigations of the DSP.

Especially in the case of Bucharest, there are quite a few people who do not live at the address where they live in the newsletter. These cases of infected people must be attributed to the locality where they actually reside, that is, to the community from which they come. This is based on epidemiological research. Test centers automatically enter results, and at the DSP level they obviously have no way to instantly conduct an epidemiological investigation., which have no form, it is physically impossible to do the epidemiological investigation in two seconds and see to which community the respective case belongs. This is a continuous flow of inputs and outputs, “stated the source quoted for” Adevărul “.

Jurma: If I can’t do 24-hour surveys, everything is useless

“The fact that I admit that I can no longer do epidemiological investigations in 24 hours is extremely serious because it means that I can no longer dispatch isolated people on time. They say that it is absurd to investigate 24 hours a day. Well, it shouldn’t be absurd at all, that’s the norm! The moment you can no longer take surveys in 24 hours, it means that everything becomes useless. Even if we did tests like the Germans, 100,000 tests a day, it wouldn’t help us at all. And then it’s not for nothing that they say there is no point in doing more tests, because they can’t do epidemiological investigations even with these few tests. More and more people tell me: I was tested, but I was able to walk for four days, because only DSP can isolate you. And then that’s the problem: I’m going to test myself in a private laboratory to no avail, because I can’t isolate myself because I don’t have sick leave. And the employers tell them that they are firing them or they do not pay their salary, “explained Octavian Jurma about the way in which the authorities lost control of the epidemic.

Experts say that this reporting method is counterproductive, if not harmful, because when we look at “new cases by counties” today, some of them come from the “basket” of “unassigned” in recent days (processed, among time, by DSP).

Deacon: Relevant is the test site, not the newsletter

“I would like people to understand one very important thing: the moment a person is identified (diagnosis) is the last chapter of the first episode of the story. At the moment the person is identified, it is very possible – and this is the premise from which we start – that they have already had infectious contacts, all the contacts that they could have had. And then what is relevant is where it was tested. Most likely (person – no) will be tested in the city where they contracted the disease. That is what interests us, where the disease came from. With this little footnote that, indeed, there are people who are itinerant, who work in the markets, let’s say they live in Alexandria, but they are travelers and during the day they come to Bucharest. However, from the point of view of the implicit assignment error – which is an implicit error – it is preferable to place the individual in the coverage area of ​​the test center and leave him assigned there, rather than redistribute later according to his identity “declared Gabriel Diaconu for Adevărul.

The method leads to absurd situations, in which an infected person who lives and works in Bucharest, ends up appearing among the cases of new diseases near the town where he has the address in the bulletin.

Aberrant assignments confuse statistics

“When they do the assignment at home, it is possible to assign it to the DSP of that city. This is another oddity that GCS didn’t explain very well. As a result, does a citizen who lives in Bucharest and gets sick in Bucharest if he has an Alba newsletter mean that he will be delegated for further epidemiological follow-up at DSP Alba? If he needs it, he will be transferred by the Bucharest ambulance and he will need medical attention in Bucharest, ”said Dr. Gabriel Diaconu.

Thus, the place where the person has registered the bulletin appears as irrelevant from the epidemiological point of view, in the conditions in which he was infected in the city where he actually lives and also “produces” new infections.

“The sole purpose of data tracking is forecasting. It is the sole purpose for which we generate such information, such data, such metrics, so that – in relation to various spaces (neighborhoods, cities, counties) – we have a perspective, we can take the pulse of the epidemic. And, based on these data, which have certain rigors, they must be as close to reality as possible to be able to make predictions. In Romania, we have reached such a mess of tests, reports, and medical documentation of COVID-19 cases that we base our predictions on a corrupt database.

He no longer reports the dead to the counties so as not to make fun of them

“I have never accused the authorities of adding fictitious patients or removing diagnoses. No, this process is a mechanical process. However, my argument is historical and begins with the spring of 2020, when, in Suceava, 36 deaths were reported, including As of today, they have not been clarified (with respect to the date they occurred). About 1% of the deaths when I did this analysis were reported at a great distance from the time the person died. And they changed to deaths reported on day X, but the date of death was maybe 5 days ago, maybe 2 weeks ago. There were also deaths reported more than a month ago by county DSPs. What happened to the reporting of deaths (by counties , no)? At one point, the decision was not to report deaths by county. Let us not come up with any idea to look at these deaths and let the authority make fun of us. What does this mean? (… ) The deaths are undeniable. The way deaths evolve in a given county may indicate what is happening in that county, admitting a national death rate of 2.6%. Deaths in a particular county can tell you if there is enough evidence in that county. I can say that the mortality is very high there, compared to the number of cases, precisely because there are so few people identified. “Gabriel Diaconu said.