Evaluation of Philippines Covid-19 Death Data @ 26 March 2022 - 1st in Series

Review of DOH data set, particularly focusing on dates of death (vs. dates of reporting of death) shows patterns that may tie the introduction of the vaccines to increased covid-19 attributed deaths.

I would like to remind my readers that each number in these reports represents a bereft family, a hole in the passed on loved ones world. Please read my data bearing in mind that you are reading about the outcomes of people whose lives mattered, and whose families and friends matter!

The daily covid-19 deaths in the Philippine are reported as they are received by the monitoring government agencies. As there can be a delay of months in the reporting of deaths, the reporting of deaths this way does not accurately represent the on-the ground deaths “with” or “from” covid-10. The most recent situation looks quite bleak with respect to deaths if we take this approach.

I have been wanting to analyze deaths based on dates of deaths, rather than the dates that the deaths were reported, which has been the standard reporting mode. I can do this by downloading and analyzing the full public domain covid-19 data sets from the Philippines Department of Health Covid-19 Tracker. This set contains data from the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020 up to 26th March 2022. Bear in mind though that the compiled data for the last 3 to 4 months is likely still substantially incomplete due to delayed reporting.

Reviewing the extracted covid-19 attributed deaths, plotted by date of death, a much sharper profile begins to emerge. Quite interesting that the “Delta Variant Spike” began within 7-days of the start of the nationwide mass vaccine rollout.

Here is a closer look with data extracted for two National Capital Region (NCR) Districts; the first image being for the 1st District of Manila, and the second for the 2nd District which includes Mandaluyong, Makati, Marikina, Pasig, and San Juan. Interesting how very neat and sudden the start of the “delta” death spike is; starting precisely within the first week of March 2021.

Cebu is quite a different case. Their district doesn’t have much of a delta death spike at all until July 2021, when deaths suddenly and steeply rise. Please observe that small isolated spike from 18 - 22nd October 2021. That represents 166 deaths occurring within a 5-day (Monday to Friday) period. In that same period in the whole of the Philippines there were only an additional 24 Covid-19 attributed deaths (Overall total 190 deaths)! Curious indeed and demanding explanation. I will provide a deeper exploration of that Cebu Spike in a separate post within the next few days.

It is a shame that there is no available data (that I have been able to find) showing the Covid-19 vaccination status of those whose deaths have been attributed to covid-19 since the vaccine rollout started. I would have thought that should be very important information to know. For the DOH and FDA Pharmacovigilance teams to know.

I will draw no conclusions here, yet. Please see what you think. Feel welcome to comment, and to share. I will present more summarized information from the downloaded data set in the next few days.