Matt Hancock received an unusually stern reprimand from the UK’s statistical regulator on Tuesday for exaggerating the number of coronavirus tests being carried out by his health department.
In a letter to the health secretary, David Norgrove, chair of the UK Statistics Authority, described the government’s daily coronavirus testing figures as “far from complete and comprehensible”.
“The aim seems to be to show the largest possible number of tests, even at the expense of understanding,” Sir David wrote.
Mr Hancock and other ministers have hailed the UK’s 200,000 per day Covid-19 testing capacity but have not been able to provide figures for the numbers of people being tested daily.
Many people have been tested more than once and tests have been counted as completed even if they were posted but never returned.
“The testing statistics still fall well short of [the UKSA’s] expectations,” wrote Sir David. “It is not surprising that, given their inadequacy, data on testing are so widely criticised and often mistrusted.”
He added that the figures gave an “artificially low impression” of the proportion of positive test results because they compared a small subset of those testing positive with the total number of tests issued.
He called for the publication of data showing how many people were tested over time, and for much simpler reporting of the number of tests carried out in the UK.
Sir David added that Mr Hancock’s statistics fell short of the national code of conduct for statistics. “The testing figures are presented in a way that is difficult to understand. Many of the key numbers make little sense without recourse to the technical notes, which are themselves sometimes hard to follow,” he said.
He said that the figures failed to help the public understand the epidemic or show how many people were infected, nor did they help the department of health. It was “hard to believe the statistics work to support the testing programme itself,” he said.
Sir David called for a complete overhaul of the reporting of coronavirus testing to help the government with its test, trace and isolate programme and also inform the public how many people were being tested and were found to have the virus.
He said the health department should publish the number of tests and results for key workers, especially in medical fields, and demographic breakdowns by age, sex and region. He added that it needed to answer the questions “How many people in what circumstances are infected? Where do they live?”
To enable a test and trace system to work effectively, the letter continued, the health department should issue a statement of the most important measures it wanted to track and then publish statistics that enabled assessment of the department’s performance.
In Germany, for example, the government’s Robert Koch Institute publishes a detailed daily summary of positive cases, including any concentrated outbreaks in a local area.
Sir David’s letter was the second he had written to Mr Hancock calling for an improvement in publishing data. Replying to the first, the health secretary pledged to engage with the UKSA to improve how testing was reported and said he strongly supported “the clear, open and transparent reporting of statistics on Covid-19 tests”.
The department of health said: “The secretary of state has spoken to Sir David and reiterated the department’s commitment to continuing to work closely with the UKSA to address their concerns.
“We have sought to work closely with the UKSA throughout our response to coronavirus to ensure statistics, which are prepared in very challenging circumstances, are presented in the best way possible.
“Our approach throughout has been to increase transparency around the government’s response to coronavirus.”
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiP2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50LzJjMzJkNzJmLThiZjMtNGE0Ni04YzJhLTg3ODE3MjFjYzBkYtIBP2h0dHBzOi8vYW1wLmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50LzJjMzJkNzJmLThiZjMtNGE0Ni04YzJhLTg3ODE3MjFjYzBkYg?oc=5
2020-06-02 13:06:45Z
CAIiEL6Cpm6AcOO7tWe_ZmO5Aw8qGAgEKg8IACoHCAow-4fWBzD4z0gw_fCpBg
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar