DATA RECONCILED, COVID DEATHS UP
In the past 30 days, 6 states have added 20,741 fatalities not logged earlier
Nearly one out of every five deaths that added to the national death toll in the past 30 days was a fatality that occurred days ago and had gone unreported, data analysed by HT reveals. In the past month, at least six states have been reconciling their death data.
NEW DELHI: Nearly one out of every five deaths that added to the national death toll in the past 30 days was a fatality that occurred days ago and had gone unreported, according to data analysed by HT. In the past month, at least six states – Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Goa, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh – have been steadily reconciling their death data and have added a total of 20,741 fatalities not logged earlier.
In Bihar, three out of every four deaths in the past month was added to the state’s tally in just one day -- on June 9. In Maharashtra, more than half the number of deaths reported in the last 30 days were old backlog statistics. In Uttarakhand, this proportion was 30%.
Such statistical correction has not only pushed up the country’s death count in the past month, but also implied that the fatalities reported during the peak of the outbreak in India during April and May were under-reported.
On Saturday, for instance, a total of 3,302 daily deaths were added to the country’s tally. However, only 1,316 deaths actually occurred that day.
All figures are from HT’S dashboard of national Covid-19 statistics, which is updated with data released by the authorities of each state.
The remaining 1,986 were old deaths due to the disease that were added by states to their respective tallies – 1,966 deaths were added by Maharashtra, nine by Punjab and 11 by Uttar Pradesh. This means that 40% of all new deaths had taken place days before. Similarly on Friday, 4,000 daily deaths were added to the country’s tally. But, on that day Maharashtra added a backlog of 2,213 deaths, Uttarakhand added 10 old fatalities and UP added four. This means that 56% were old. On Thursday, this proportion was 45% of the 3,410 reported deaths that day – 1,522 by Maharashtra, one in Goa, 14 in Uttarakhand, three in Punjab and one in UP.
This reconciliation touched a peak on Wednesday, when the national death tally touched a record high of 6,141, according to HT’S dashboard. Of these, 71% were old deaths, with a majority (3,951) coming from Bihar’s reconciliation. Other major contributors were Maharashtra (400) and Uttarakhand (30). For Maharashtra and Uttarakhand, the reconciliation process has been a near-daily occurrence over the past month. The western state has updated its tally 25 days in the last month, while the hill state has done so 27 times in the same period. In absolute numbers, Maharashtra has added 15,756 old deaths to its tally in the past month – constituting 53.5% of all fatalities the state reported.