Yet another TMC gaffe: Teacher gets call he has ‘died’ of Covid

THANE: A Thane-based teacher, who recovered from Covid in August 2020, got a rude shock on Tuesday when a caller reportedly from the civic corporation’s birth and death registration department informed him about his ‘demise’ due to the SARS-2 infection in April.
This is the latest in a series of Covid-related gaffes committed by the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC)—from swapping dead bodies to triple vaccinating a resident.
On Wednesday, an audio clip of the phone conversation between the teacher, Chandrashekhar Desai (55), and a municipal staffer went viral. During the one-minute call, the staffer is heard asking Desai about his details only to inform him that, as per the records, he is dead. The caller immediately apologised and disconnected the call after Desai questioned the lapse. He went to the TMC headquarters and saw his name on the list of deceased patients. “I was not allowed to click a picture of the records. I was told there could be some error on part of the department,” Desai said.
However, TMC officials on Wednesday told TOI that its officials were only cross-checking the data of 16 death cases sent by the State Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) cell, as per protocol. Death-related data is verified at the local level and sent back to the state before being uploaded on the national database.
TMC health officer Dr Vaijayanati Deoghekar said: “The corporation is not at fault as we only verify the names of the deceased sent to us daily. This is the first incident that has been highlighted in Thane and we feel there could be some error somewhere. We have alerted the state regarding the same,” she said. IDSP chief Dr Pradeep Awate remained unavailable for comment despite repeated attempts.