State and NCR cities’ Covid data mismatch comes under scanner

Ghaziabad: The state government has directed the district health department to ensure that there is no inconsistency in Covid data at the two levels. The health department has asked the district Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme unit to go through all patients’ reports and remove inconsistencies.
For about two weeks now, the total number of cases, number of people discharged after recovery and the number of active cases have been different on the state and district lists.
The discrepancies could also be seen for Gautam Budh Nagar. The chief medical officer in Ghaziabad said that in some cases, Covid positive patients from other districts are treated Ghaziabad hospitals and when their tests were conducted again, the details get added to the district’s tally. “It has happened because of the duplication of patients’ names,” he said. Now, health officials have been asked to remove such data.
While earlier, the district list had more positive patients compared to the state list for the past few days, the opposite can be seen. Ghaziabad chief medical officer Dr NK Gupta said the discrepancy has come to the department’s notice and measures are being taken to check them.
In Gautam Budh Nagar, health officials had earlier said the mismatch was because of duplication of reports from laboratories. However, in the past few days, the state list has shown up to 15 extra cases that did not feature in the district list. “It is not a case of under or over reporting, it is just a discrepancy that is being sorted. A new portal has been set up where a unique identification number is generated for every positive patient. Separate IDs are being created for the same person as the data is being uploaded from several places,” said Dr Sunil Dohare, district surveillance officer.
He said data is rechecked and errors are rectified within a day or two of reporting. Asked about the inconsistencies, Noida district magistrate Suhas LY, said: “We had written to the department two days ago, but the discrepancy remains. I’ve spoken to the state and district surveillance officers.”
(Additional reporting by Snehil Sinha in Noida)