India’s 1.8% fatality dubious, deaths under-reported

Many suspected Covid patients taken dead to hospitals, tests get delayed, not in official toll

Are there under-reported, missed and suspected deaths in India due to

Covid-19? The official statement of Centre of case fatality rate going down to

1.8 per cent is being doubted by experts who have raised the issue in the journal Lancet in its September issue.

With 4.02 million Covid

19 cases, 3.11 million recovered patients and 69,561 deaths as on September 5, mortality data is shrouded with uncertainty. The reason for this doubt is that there are many cases of suspected Covid-19 patients being brought dead to hospitals and the arrival of test results after the death of a patient. This data has not been included in the toll.

Maharashtra, West Bengal and Telangana state have not included cases of death where co-morbid conditions were high, in their data from from April to June. Tamil Nadu revised its toll by more than 400, which got public health specialists to point out that this could be the case in all other states.

Experts have pointed out five grey areas for this under-reporting. One there were many patients brought dead to hospital and as bodies are not tested it is not been known whether they were Covid19 positive.

Second are those categories where patients have been admitted for treatment but died in a few hours and the results came later but was not disclosed or updated by the state governments.

From April to June in Telangana state and many others, private hospitals were not given permission to treat Covid 19 patients. They treated severe respiratory syndrome, cardiac and other co-morbid conditions but the death of suspected Covid-19 patients was passed off as death due to these conditions.

Fourth was the social stigma where families did not want Covid-19 as the cause of death in the death certificate.

Fifth, the Integrated Disease Surveillance System (IDSS) collecting data of the disease and deaths has not been allowed to function according to the rules as many states have taken the control of data to the office of health ministers. Due to this reason, clear-cut numbers have not been given to them and data collection and assimilation has been very poor.

● MAHARASHTRA, WEST Bengal and Telangana did not include cases of death where co-morbid conditions were high, in their data from from April to June.

● TAMIL NADU had revised its toll by more than 400