Noida & Gzb stop Covid bulletin, window to key local information

Noida/Ghaziabad: The Noida and Ghaziabad administrations have stopped coming out with health bulletins on local Covid-related data, saying they would only share the report released by Lucknow from now.
For the past several weeks, the sharing of local information on Covid cases had been marked by inconsistencies and repeated changes in formats. On several occasions, when the districts reported a high number of Covid cases, the health departments did not come out with any bulletin.
But such was not the case in the initial two months of the Covid outbreak. The bulletin shared by the Ghaziabad health department was quite elaborate and contained details about the number of people admitted to quarantine centres and isolation wards, the number of hotspots, besides other crucial data related to sample collection and patients getting discharged.
Since April 28, the Ghaziabad administration has changed the format of bulletins at least five times, removing significant aspects of information one by one. The bulletin Ghaziabad shared the same day had different layout — details related to quarantine centres and patients admitted to hospitals had been removed. Instead, a cumulative figure of patients admitted to various hospitals across Ghaziabad, Delhi and Meerut had been provided.
The format was changed again two days later. This time, the details of patients in various districts had been removed altogether.
On occasions that Ghaziabad reported a large number of cases, the daily bulletin was not shared by the administration at all. For instance, when 19 cases were reported on May 14 — the highest for that time — the health department did not come out with any data. It was released the next morning, with an explanation that some cases had been repeated.
Since May 21, the daily bulletin suddenly started adding samples from private labs without specifying the share. For the first time on June 3, the bulletin had proper information about Covid-related deaths.
This format was short-lived, too. After three days, the bulletin stopped giving details about patients who had died.
On June 23 again, Ghaziabad did not issue any report. The district had recorded 121 cases that day, its biggest single-day jump. Instead, it forwarded the state report, which mentioned only 34 cases.
Noida, too, has insisted on releasing the state government report from now. Till about five days ago, Noida’s health bulletin mentioned the daily samples taken, details of cross-notified patients and other information such as cause of deaths, etc. It also mentioned the source of infection — whether the new positive cases were contacts of previous patients, ILI or SARI patients or healthcare workers.
However, most of the information that is being shared now is filtered and restricted to basic numbers. Like Ghaziabad, the bulletin that Noida shared initially included a patient’s age, gender and his residential address. This information also helped residents know about the number of cases in their areas. But midway through May, Noida stopped sharing several pieces of information, such as the number of samples being collected. Noida did not share data on samples for 26 days, amid allegations that the district was not conducting enough tests.
TOI reached out to several officials in Noida and Ghaziabad, but none were willing to comment on the issue. Ghaziabad DM Ajay Shankar Pandey could not be contacted. Officials in Lucknow, too, could not be reached for a comment.