Questions rise over Mumbai's Covid death toll

BJP's Devendra Fadnavis had alleged that the BMC hasn't included 951 Covid deaths in the city. The state chief secretary also told TOI that the data reconciliation exercise was prompted afetr discrepancy was noticed in many cases.

The state chief secreatry clarified that the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 states that if a person has the infectious disease, his death, no matter what the reason (except in three conditions) is counted as death due to that infection. The three conditions are: animal attack, accident/crime or suicide.

A doctor with the civic death review committee said that many deaths were not added to the overall Covid toll as they are yet to be analysed. CIvic officials feel that the matter is being blown out of proportions.

The death toll in Mumbai is already the highest in the country with 2,250 dead. This could further go up if discrepancies crop up during the reconciliation of the data.