Introduction:

Public health surveillance together with good sanitary decisions is essential for the proper management of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Objective:

To compare the performance of Colombian departments based on the quality of the data and to build the national ranking.

Materials and methods:

We analyzed the accumulated cases published between March 6 and September 1, 2020, by the Instituto Nacional de Salud. To achieve comparability, the analyses considered the day the first case was diagnosed as the first analysis date for each department. The fulfillment of Benford's law was assessed with p-values in the log-likelihood ratio or chi-square tests. The analysis was completed with the lethality observed in each department and then the performance ranking was established.

Results:

Bogotá and Valle del Cauca had optimal public health surveillance performance all along. The data suggest that Antioquia, Nariño, and Tolima had good containment and adequate public health surveillance after the economic opening beginning on June 1, 2020.

Conclusion:

We obtained the ranking of the departments regarding the quality of public health surveillance data. The best five departments can be case studies to identify the elements associated with good performance.

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