With most Covid deaths in state, Faridabad overtakes Gurgaon

Gurgaon: With 123 deaths, Faridabad has overtaken Gurgaon to become the district with the highest number of deaths in the state, according to data from the district. However, state health department data shows both the districts still have 120 deaths each. Till Thursday, both the districts had 120 deaths each, but Faridabad added three new deaths to its toll on Saturday, taking the total to 123. The state currently has 389 deaths.
While Faridabad saw its first death on April 30, a spike in fatalities was observed from June 15 onwards. After reporting only five and 15 deaths respectively in the first and second week of June, the number of deaths rose to 25 in the third week in Faridabad. The district further added 17 new deaths in the last week of June. Similarly, the district reported 19 deaths in the first week of July, followed by nine deaths each in the second and third week and 10 deaths in the fourth week of the month.
However, discrepancies in the state and district data were also reflected in other numbers. According to the district data, Faridabad has 7,579 total Covid cases whereas the state bulletin shows 7,474 cases for the district. Similarly, though the district bulletin highlights that it has 1,624 active cases, the state bulletin shows 52 less for the district.
The discrepancies started on July 13, when the district reported 245 new Covid cases and two deaths but the state data showed no new cases and no deaths on the day.
A senior official from the Faridabad health department said that they are regularly sharing the data with the state but even then there are discrepancies. “We have no clue why there are discrepancies in the number of deaths and total cases in Faridabad,” the official added.
Meanwhile, Haryana FDA commissioner Ashok Meena, who also deals with the Covid health bulletin for the state, said that the department carries out an audit before putting up the bulletin. “We scrutinise all data that we get from districts before putting it out. Sometimes we face issue of duplication of data. It is difficult to take data down after putting it on the website, so we crosscheck it several times. Hence, on some occasions, the update is delayed by a day or two," he said. When asked why the discrepancy is only for Faridabad, Meena assured a solution soon. However, even after the Sunday evening bulletin, the discrepancies remained.
When asked why only data from Faridabad has to be scrutinised twice, Dr Dhruv Chaudhary, nodal officer for Covid-19 in Haryana, said, “We are aware of the discrepancies and are fixing the Faridabad Covid data problem at the earliest.”