‘COVID data reporting from Nagaland best in the country’
Dimapur, August 31 (MExN): Nagaland is reportedly doing exceptionally well in COVID-19 surveillance reporting, according to a study conducted by a Stanford University Team.
“Our recent findings show that the quality of surveillance data reporting in Nagaland is the best in the country. Nagaland scored highest in our metric because of high quality granular data reporting through weekly bulletins,” researchers Abeynaya Gnanasekaran and Varun Vasudevan communicated in an email to the state Health and Family Welfare Department on August 31.
The research team stated that, by releasing the data, along with the public health recommendations, the state government is empowering people to be proactive about their health. “We encourage you to continue publishing such high-quality bulletins,” it added.
The research was conceived and led by Prof James Zou, Department of Biomedical Data Science, Stanford University. Since May 2020, the team has been evaluating the reporting quality of COVID-19 surveillance data from the state Health departments in India.
“Reporting quality refers to the presence/absence of a data item in the surveillance data published by the state government,” it explained, while informing that the findings from 2020 were published in the peer-reviewed BMC Public Health journal and the Journal of the Indian Institute of Science.
According to the researchers, the report is a comprehensive assessment of national and state governments’ digital platforms (web and mobile) that identified what is present and what is missing in the reporting of surveillance data, besides other data relating to bed availability and vaccination monitoring with regard to COVID-19 in India.
Their most recent paper, currently under review, evaluated and quantified the reporting quality of surveillance, vaccination, and vacant bed availability data across 100+ websites and apps of the Central and state governments during May-June 2021. “The paper heavily focuses on granular (disaggregated data),” it said.
The paper, which was attached in the email highlighted that “the northeastern state of Nagaland scored highest by reporting granular data through weekly bulletins.”
It pointed out that the age, gender, and co-morbidity data of deaths that were provided in the state’s weekly bulletin showed “high quality granular surveillance reporting.” As per its surveillance reporting score, Nagaland scored the highest with 0.61 followed by Kerala with a 0.57 score.
According to the research team, the governments in India should recognize the importance of reporting granular data and make it a priority before the next wave of COVID-19. The study recommended recording of age and gender-wise distribution of cases and deaths, co-morbidities for deaths, besides details of severe adverse events following immunization cases, and vaccination coverage for each dose stratified by eligibility category.
The study concluded that by not reporting granular details, governments are making the mistake of making certain vital information invisible to the scientific community and the public.
