Two Inter-Ministerial Central Teams (IMCT) that visited West Bengal to assess the Covid-19 situation, have asserted in their final assessment that the mortality rate in the state is the highest in the country, at 12.8 per cent> This, they say, is an indication low testing and weak surveillance and tracking.
On April 30, the West Bengal government had declared that henceforth all Covid-19 patients would be indicated in the daily statistics and death certificates would be issued by the hospital with a Committee of Doctors examining a random sample. So far, a special audit committee formed by the state government was solely empowered to judge if deaths are on account of Covid-19 or co-morbidity.
In a letter to West Bengal’s chief secretary, Rajiva Sinha, IMCT’s team leader Apurva Chandra said, “This is a big step towards transparency. At the same time, it raises the total death count of Covid-19 patients in the state to 105 as on April 30. For a total reported number of 816 Covid-19 patients, the mortality rate of 12.8 per cent is by far the highest in the country.”
The revelation comes at a time when the national average for the mortality rate is 3.2 per cent – the lowest in the world.
Earlier, the state’s governor, Jagdeep Dhankhar had also alleged that the state government had been mis-reporting Covid-19 data.
There have also been discrepancies between the data shared by the West Bengal government and that of the Centre, which was brought to the notice of the governor and the IMCT.
In the letter, Chandra said, “The state needs to be transparent and consistent in reporting figures and not down play the spread of the virus”.
In the last state government health bulletin on April 20, where number of active cases and number of death was mentioned, the West Bengal government claimed that a total of 33 people had expired due to the pandemic and the total number of active cases stood at 572.
However, the state government changed the bulletin format May 1 onwards where now only new Covid-19 cases and deaths in the last 24 hours are reported and the total number of active cases and deaths are not.
Trinamool Congress leader Derek O’Brien hit out at the IMCT claiming that the central team should have written first to the union heath ministry to convince them of its findings.
“Now, the Centre is sending only one team to West Bengal to advise the state on the Covid-19 situation while two and more teams are being sent to other states. This shows West Bengal’s situation is much better than others. In fact, West Bengal and Kerala can become models for others to fight Covid-19”, he said.