Mumbai death toll rises to 3,165 with 55 new fatalities

According to the data shared by the BMC, 941 new coronavirus patients have been detected in Mumbai, taking the tally to 60,142. Meanwhile, the death toll rises to 3,165 with 55 new fatalities. 

The city of Mumbai has been the latest to admit discrepancies in the number of deaths being reported due to the coronavirus. On Monday, it emerged that more than 400 deaths had not been included in the list of the deceased in Mumbai. However, according to sources, the error in the data shared was a result of an internal assessment that revealed that a follow-up on the patients had been missing. It was then understood that all of them had succumbed to the coronavirus but were not included in the list. A few of them have since been added to the list, but more deaths are left to be accounted for.

According to the guidelines shared by the ICMR, the death of any person suffering from the coronavirus has to be notified as COVID-19 related death unless the patient had a terminal illness or dies due to unnatural causes. Earlier, there were certain discrepancies that were noted by the officials between the state government figures and the figures uploaded on the ICMR portal. Following that, all districts were asked to update the case details of each patient and further update the data.

On June 11, Health Secretary Dr Pradeep Vyas had written to all districts giving them time until June 15 to update figures. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) was asked about the data discrepancy at a high-level meeting last week, as per sources. The BMC is, however, said to have acknowledged 451 ‘missing’ deaths in the official tally. The civic body had told the state government that three of the 451 deaths had occurred due to unnatural reasons, like suicide or an accident and that 20 other names were duplication in data. Simultaneously, a decision was taken to officially direct each district to reconcile their data.

After Mumbai, the maximum unreported deaths were found in Thane which reported 146 deaths. It is being followed by Pune (85), Solapur (51), Jalgaon (34), Aurangabad (33), Nashik (28), Akola (14), Raigad (14), Dhule (12) and Palghar (11). A fewer number of unreported deaths were found in 14 other districts in the state of Maharashtra.