Researchers from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Viocruz) and health technicians interviewed CNN He noted that one of the major health information systems for Covid-19 had been unstable and faulty for at least two months. The Influenza Surveillance Information System SIVEP (System of Influenza Surveillance Information), operated by the Ministry of Health, has not been properly updated throughout Brazil.
The problem is not related to the hacker’s attack on the Ministry of Health on Friday (10), but it raises a serious alert: according to the researchers, the problem with analyzing and entering data means that monitoring the epidemic in Brazil is taking place “in the dark”. The CNN He interrogated the Ministry of Health and is waiting to return.
SIVEP influenza has been used by state and municipal epidemiological surveillance to report cases of respiratory infections since H1N1 in 2009. Many of the country’s health departments often fail to report, said researcher Christofam Barcelos, responsible for Monitora Covid-19, the epidemic monitoring portal Vicruz. Mild cases of Covid.
“We’ll spend a few weeks or months in the dark.” There may be a new increase in infection and we don’t notice that from the data,” he said.
According to Barcellos, the moment is crucial until the data is well updated, as managers across the country are looking at the numbers to decide, for example, whether to keep the New Year’s Eve party.
“Brazil is going through a positive moment for the epidemic, but it is important to look at the coming weeks with the best possible quality of data. There are days when the city does not record any cases of the Covid virus. And he warned that the virus records 1,000 cases in the other.
Technicians have heard before CNN He said that reporting of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SRAG) cases is possible in SIVEP influenza, but the process is very slow. There is, for example, a requirement to enter the batch number of the antigen test a patient is undergoing to find out if they have Covid-19.
There is also a complaint about excessive bureaucracy in filling in the data, and an assessment that the Ministry of Health has not yet succeeded in minimizing the impact of the system’s instability in the end. “The doctor, in the end, needs to fill out four forms, submitting several statements at the same time. With this instability, the process takes longer, ”said the state health director.
Marcelo Gomez, InfoGripe Coordinator, from Fiocruz, stated that there are technical delays hampering the analysis of the situation at the time of the pandemic when filling in the data.
Today we have a problem monitoring many respiratory viruses. There is a point of system strain. Integration with vaccination data makes the work, in the end, much slower,” he said.
A hacker attack reveals that the data storage system is outdated
Vice President of the National Board of Health Trustees, Nisio Trindade, told CNN The health systems attacked by hackers on Friday (10) have been using the same pattern 15 years ago and are outdated. “Data is stored as in 2004, an infrastructure that was thought of at the time, where there was no discussion about the Internet of Things, about data security,” he said.
According to him, the fact that ConnectSus is offline raises doubts, especially after the government announced a 5-day quarantine or provided a vaccination certificate for travelers arriving in Brazil. He said: “The Ministry of Health needs a new data strategy, this is a fact, but the attack carried out today makes everything more suspicious regarding the criticism received by the vaccination document.”
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