According to reports, at least 451 deaths of the patients suffering from the coronavirus in the city of Mumbai was not reported by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). This was revealed after a massive data reconciliation exercise was conducted by the Maharashtra government.
The BMC 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. As per officials, over the last week, the civic body has reported 57 of the 451 deaths in a staggered manner.
The health officials have maintained that the discrepancies have come up during an exercise to match the figures of the ICMR portal with the government of Maharashtra. This exercise took several days and ended on June 6. The exercise analysed every case, omitted duplication and updated the details of the patients who recovered, the ones that are infected and also those who had succumbed to the coronavirus. 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.
On Monday, Former Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis wrote to CM Uddhav Thackeray. He raised concerns over the “unreported deaths” in the city of Mumbai. Fadnavis asserted that around 500 deaths due to the coronavirus across hospitals in Mumbai were yet to be given to the death audit committee. Furthermore, a member of the seven-member BMC death committee stated that the committee meets daily or at least twice a week to analyse the medical records of the deceased. This is done in order to ascertain whether the death is related to COVID-19 or not. Following this, the epidemiology cell reports these figures.
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