Deaths rise as numbers reconciled

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