The Kerala government said on Friday that it will soon add a backlog of around 7,000 Covid-19 deaths, or old fatalities that had previously gone unreported or misreported, to its toll.
The move, announced on Friday by state health minister Veena George, will result in a massive spike in the state’s Covid-19 death toll. She said these uncounted deaths occurred before hospitals started uploading data of such fatalities online before June this year.
Till Friday night, a total of 26,072 people are reported to have lost their lives to the viral disease in the state. This number does not yet include the roughly 7,000 uncounted deaths that occurred between March 2020 and June 2021, according to government data.
George also denied the Opposition charge that there were deliberate attempts to underplay the death rate to keep the state’s mortality rate low. “There was no deliberate attempt to exclude deaths of so many from the tally. We have been following ICMR guideline regarding Covid-19 deaths, but due to some technical glitches these deaths were left out. We will revise the list again,” the minister said while replying to an adjournment motion moved by the Opposition.
The massive reconciliation will dent Kerala’s reputation as the state with one of the best case fatality rates (CFR) in the country – 0.5% against a national average of 1.5%. After the reconciliation is issued, this number is expected to rise to around 0.7%, data shows.
Kerala reported 10,944 new cases on Friday after 95,510 samples were tested with a test positivity rate of 11.45% – the highest in the country. With an active caseload of 116,645, the state remains, by far, the biggest Covid-19 hot spot in the country.
Several other states such as Maharashtra, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, have all issued such statistical corrections to incorporate previously uncounted fatalities in their Covid-19 death tolls. Such exercises have not only pushed up the country’s death count in recent months, but also implied that the fatalities reported during the peak of the outbreak in the country were grossly under-reported.
When the matter of unreported deaths came up in the state assembly on Friday, Opposition members insisted for an explanation and later walked out of the house. “The government did it deliberately to maintain its record on low mortality. The list is incomplete as many Covid deaths fail to figure in the list. Its public relations exercise fell flat. No government should have done such a disservice to its people,” said Congress leader VD Satheesan. He said the government was even denying the paltry relief to victims due to its indifferent attitude, a charge that the health minister rejected.
Experts expressed the need for more transparency in reporting of such deaths. “The government is slowly admitting its mistakes. It has done a grave injustice to victims. We need more transparency and these measures should not be politicised,” said public health expert Dr SS Lal, who was earlier with the World Health Organisation.
