Provinces delay Covid-19 reports: Doctor

​THE Coronavirus (Covid-19) National Control Centre (NCC) is not getting reports from provinces on time, resulting in the delaying of outdated figures in its daily updates, a doctor says.
National Pandemic Response deputy controller Dr Daoni Esorom said 202 new Covid-19 cases were reported on Tuesday of which 47 were reported in the last 24 hours, 105 in the last six days, 35 between seven and 14 days ago and 15 from more than 30 days ago.
He said no death was recorded that day but, on Monday, 18 deaths were recorded and some of the deaths were from December because death certificates were received late.
Dr Esorom said most of these deaths were of people who had underlying medical condition then contracted the Covid-19.

He said, on Tuesday, only 13 provincial health authorities submitted their reports and not all the provincial authorities were reporting consistently, resulting in reports coming in late.
He said the total recorded Covid-19 case were 39,035 of which 37,036 had recovered, 1,371 were active as they were diagnosed in the last 14 days and 628 died.
Dr Esorom said the results of more than 120 samples that were sent to Australia weeks ago for genome sequencing had not returned so the Delta case figure was still 708 and Omicron one.
“We are currently in the fourth surge driven by the Omicron variant,” he said.
“We are saying Omicron based on the characteristic of the variant where the transmissibility is high and the symptoms mild.
“Our challenge is getting the results of genome sequencing back from Doherty Institute (in Melbourne).
“It is a nightmare for us.
“The delayed reports are causing us a lot of problems.”
Dr Esorom said the PHAs should do a lot more testing and report on time as these were critical in keeping track of the situation and planning.
He said the positivity rate was high, meaning there was high community transmission and a lot more cases out there but people were not coming forward for testing.
Dr Esorom said the NCC was monitoring the situation at the borders of Indonesia and the Solomon Islands where there were crossing over of people.

The National/PNGHealthWatch
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