In an interview with RTP, Cristina Santos, Pedro Pereira Rodrigues, and Altamiro da Costa Pereira, from CINTESIS – Center for Health Technology and Services Research and from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto (FMUP), questioned again the quality of data from epidemiological surveillance of COVID-19 provided by the Directorate-General for Health.
There are several shortcomings pointed out by the team of 12 researchers. For example, “there are about 4000 cases that disappear in the [August] update”, said Cristina Santos, who fears “big bias” in studies that used this data.
For Pedro Pereira Rodrigues, “it is necessary to end the paradigm that there are data for scientific research and other data, be it epidemiological surveillance data or health care provision data. It is important that this is taken into account when designing information systems,” he said to RTP.
The researchers make themselves available to health authorities to help improve the data. The objective, said Altamiro da Costa Pereira, is to establish synergies between the faculties and the structures of the Ministry of Health. In this way, it is expected to contribute to better management of the pandemic.
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