THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
May 14, 2020 at 18:09 JST
Health center officials in Tokyo’s Ota Ward are busy with tasks related to COVID-19 on April 21. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
The Tokyo metropolitan government has shifted from accepting COVID-19 patient data by fax, pivoting to using an online data management system after it discovered data errors stemming from a mountain of paperwork that was not cross-checked.
Tokyo started using the new online system because each local health center was reporting its data via fax, but failed to first check it with the metropolitan government, resulting in multiple counts of the same patient and other mistakes.
Tokyo discovered missing reports of 111 infected patients and overlapping counts for 35 people in its tally, according to officials.
Those kinds of errors can pose major problems for policy makers, who are basing their countermeasures against COVID-19 on that data.
Of the 31 health centers in Tokyo, six are in the Tama region and the island area, operated by Tokyo, while the rest are run by 23 wards and two cities.
After confirming their new cases, the 31 health centers would fax the reports that included names, symptoms and infection routes, to Tokyo’s Social Welfare and Public Health Bureau, which is in charge of the tallying.
As many people were confirmed infected with the virus, a tremendous amount of paperwork was faxed to the bureau, sources said.
However, the bureau and the health centers did not verify the data via telephone or e-mail each other.
In one case, the same infected patients were reported by fax multiple times. One infection case was counted three times in the final tally.
There was also no standardized format for how health centers reported deaths from the coronavirus to the bureau.
The Tokyo metropolitan government started using its own information sharing system full scale on May 12 to remedy the situation, it said, which allows it to better share data with heath centers.
The health centers can now input their data on infected patients by computer.
Tokyo’s bureau can also check the information in real time using the new system.
(This article was written by Chiaki Ogihara and Yusuke Nagano.)
Smear campaign targets patient who knowingly traveled to Tokyo
May 13, 2020
22 new COVID-19 cases confirmed in Tokyo on May 10
May 10, 2020
Tokyo virus tally again under 50, but nationwide deaths hit 606
May 9, 2020
COVID-19 cases falling or holding steady in Tokyo and Osaka
May 6, 2020
Tokyo taps AI robots for duty at 2 hotels housing virus patients
May 1, 2020
Mysterious mask brokers supply Tokyo businesses amid shortages
April 30, 2020
Stories about memories of cherry blossoms solicited from readers
Cooking experts, chefs and others involved in the field of food introduce their special recipes intertwined with their paths in life.
A series based on diplomatic documents declassified by Japan’s Foreign Ministry
A series on the death of a Japanese woman that sparked a debate about criminal justice policy in the United States
A series about Japanese-Americans and their memories of World War II
Here is a collection of first-hand accounts by “hibakusha” atomic bomb survivors.
