New Delhi: The politics over Delhi's
Covid-19 deaths took a new twist on Friday as ruling Aam Aadmi Party government questioned the BJP-run corporations' statistics with a new term 'suspected Covid-19 deaths'. The three corporations, however, stuck to their ground and said suspected deaths were beyond 2,098 at over 2500. Delhi health minister
Satyendra Jain fired a fresh salvo questioning the statistics being given out by corporations. Jain said, “The cremation and burials done following Covid protocols are the same for
Covid positive patients and Covid suspected patients. The slip being issued by the hospitals is the same for both.”
Jain elaborated that a Covid suspect is a patient who was not confirmed Covid patient but there was somebody in the family who was Covid positive. “For example, an old person dies and there was a Covid confirmed case in his immediate family so we classify him as a Covid suspect. The protocols followed are the same as a confirmed case,” Jain said. The corporations, however, said what they had were confirmed deaths.
North Delhi Municipal Corporation standing committee chairman Jai Prakash told ET, “This is just going into unnecessary semantics. They are trying to save face. But now we are segregating the data. We have found that in North Delhi Municipal Corporation there have been 976 confirmed case deaths as we mentioned and 82 are suspected patients. In South Delhi, 1,080 confirmed deaths and 140 Covid suspected deaths. We are still confirming
the East Delhi Municipal Corporation figures but so far 20 suspected deaths and 42 confirmed case deaths.”