As the Health Department prepares to release the backlog of “undeclared” COVID-19 deaths in the State, there is confusion galore as to why these deaths remained undeclared.
The allegation that the State has been less than honest about declaring all COVID deaths or including all deaths of COVID-positive persons in its official list of deaths is something that was raised right from the initial days of the pandemic when the Health Department refused to include the name of a Mahe native in the list.
The State has never offered a clear explanation as to why several deaths, which occurred in the continuum of the afflictions unleashed by COVID, were missing from the official list.
The issue has assumed myriad dimensions now that the issue of ex gratia payment to the families who lost their kin to COVID has been raised by the Supreme Court.
Senior Health officials maintained that there was never any deliberate data manipulation by the State and that the backlog of undeclared deaths were a result of incomplete medical bulletins from districts.
“These are referred back to the districts for filling the data gaps but these are never returned to the State. Those deaths are kept in abeyance, undeclared and has resulted in a backlog,” said a member of the SDAC, a scientific body which was constituted for auditing deaths.
It is pointed out that till the online, real-time reporting system was installed, there never was any formal system in the State for reporting COVID deaths.
Now that the issue of “undeclared” deaths has been laid out in the open, the Health Department has written to the districts to compile and send back the details of all undeclared deaths.
District Medical Officers (DMOs) on the other hand had pointed out that the data on all COVID deaths from districts till June 17 is available. They said that all districts many pending deaths, which were not audited and declared.
The SDAC, which has taken the rap for “sitting in judgement” on COVID deaths reported from districts, said that death auditing was a scientific process with proper documentation.
“If the audit committee has assessed some deaths as not-due-to-COVID, there are also several deaths which have been certified as non-COVID death, but which the SDAC felt are indeed COVID deaths. Our process of death auditing cannot change because the apex court has raised the question of compensation,” the SDAC member said.
The deaths audited by the SDAC are reported to the State, which is declared by another committee at the Directorate of Health Services. Many of the deaths declared by the SDAC often go missing from the final list on technical grounds such as absence of signature or missing SRF Id (Specimen Referral Form).
“It is this screening at multiple levels which has led to a huge backlog – at least 5,000 deaths or more – of “undeclared” deaths and accusations of data fudging. The question is, why should SDAC audit the mass deaths happening during a pandemic. Why did the State decide to centralise the entire process of COVID death declaration from the beginning of the pandemic if it was not to have a grip on the number of deaths declared?,” a member of the State’s expert committee on COVID asked.
If this was something done for short-sighted political gain, its cumulative detrimental impact has been that the State wasted opportunities for continuous system improvement and mortality reduction at all stages of the pandemic. Honesty would have perhaps paid better dividends.
