KOLKATA: The Bengal government has ordered all health facilities in the state to release a single comprehensive list of “confirmed Covid deaths” instead of classifying them into “Covid deaths” and “deaths caused by co-morbid (other life-threatening) factors”.
The changed policy of reporting Covid deaths followed recommendations of the state’s medical audit committee, based on which a detailed advisory had already been sent to all health facilities, state chief secretary Rajiva Sinha said on Monday.
Bengal’s Covid deaths stood at 61, up from Sunday’s tally of 50, as the total number of cases reached 1,259 (61 of them new) and the number of active cases climbed up to 908. A much-needed dose of happy news came in the form of the list of 218 patients, who recovered and went home, till Monday. The state’s recovery rate climbed up to 17.2% on the strength of this wholesome number.
Sinha blamed the erstwhile “complicated reporting system” and hoped it would now be “fool-proof”, adding that the government was now switching to real-time reporting.
“Updating real-time data is a dynamic process. The government did not receive real-time data from private health facilities in many cases, leading to a mismatch of figures. We have retrieved the missing data, both in terms of positive cases and deaths. We were in the process of rechecking our data the last three days,” he said, adding that no one should feel the government was lax in reporting deaths.
“There has been reconciliation of figures,” he said. The medical audit panel would pick up samples “once in a while”, examine them and send recommendations if they came across “shortcomings”, he added.
Sinha also explained the mismatch between the Indian Council of Medical Research and the state government data on Covid-positive cases. “The ICMR records the number of patients who have tested positive once. The state government, on the other hand, updates the confirmed cases’ data only after performing multiple tests on a patient. Patients who may have reported positive in the first test may have tested negative the second time,” he said.
State health secretary Vivek Kumar elaborated on the process followed by the expert panel. “It tracked all patients’ history (from bed tickets to pathological and other investigations and line of treatment) and then called for papers from treating hospitals more than once to ascertain the reasons behind the deaths,” he said, adding that ICMR guidelines were followed.
Chief secretary Sinha stressed that Covid tests had been ramped up along with tracing of contacts and putting them in isolation or admitting them to designated hospitals. “Test figures 10 days ago were 109 per million. They have now gone up to 279 per million. More than 2,200 tests were performed in the 15 laboratories during the last 24 hours, taking the total test tally to 25,116,” he added.
The changed policy of reporting Covid deaths followed recommendations of the state’s medical audit committee, based on which a detailed advisory had already been sent to all health facilities, state chief secretary Rajiva Sinha said on Monday.
Bengal’s Covid deaths stood at 61, up from Sunday’s tally of 50, as the total number of cases reached 1,259 (61 of them new) and the number of active cases climbed up to 908. A much-needed dose of happy news came in the form of the list of 218 patients, who recovered and went home, till Monday. The state’s recovery rate climbed up to 17.2% on the strength of this wholesome number.
Sinha blamed the erstwhile “complicated reporting system” and hoped it would now be “fool-proof”, adding that the government was now switching to real-time reporting.
“Updating real-time data is a dynamic process. The government did not receive real-time data from private health facilities in many cases, leading to a mismatch of figures. We have retrieved the missing data, both in terms of positive cases and deaths. We were in the process of rechecking our data the last three days,” he said, adding that no one should feel the government was lax in reporting deaths.
“There has been reconciliation of figures,” he said. The medical audit panel would pick up samples “once in a while”, examine them and send recommendations if they came across “shortcomings”, he added.
Sinha also explained the mismatch between the Indian Council of Medical Research and the state government data on Covid-positive cases. “The ICMR records the number of patients who have tested positive once. The state government, on the other hand, updates the confirmed cases’ data only after performing multiple tests on a patient. Patients who may have reported positive in the first test may have tested negative the second time,” he said.
State health secretary Vivek Kumar elaborated on the process followed by the expert panel. “It tracked all patients’ history (from bed tickets to pathological and other investigations and line of treatment) and then called for papers from treating hospitals more than once to ascertain the reasons behind the deaths,” he said, adding that ICMR guidelines were followed.
Chief secretary Sinha stressed that Covid tests had been ramped up along with tracing of contacts and putting them in isolation or admitting them to designated hospitals. “Test figures 10 days ago were 109 per million. They have now gone up to 279 per million. More than 2,200 tests were performed in the 15 laboratories during the last 24 hours, taking the total test tally to 25,116,” he added.
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