Odisha: Covid death audit likely to take another month

BHUBANESWAR: The slow pace of Covid death audit has led to a situation where daily fatalities being reported is now close to new infections. With a huge backlog in auditing Covid deaths, the state would take at least a month to complete it, a government source said.
On Friday, while Ganjam saw 12 fresh cases, it reported 10 deaths. Jharsuguda with three infections registered one death, while Nuapada had one death and two infections and Balangir five infections and two deaths.
Director medical education and training, CBK Mohanty, one of the three members of the state Covid death review committee, said while every single Covid death is being reported with all sincerity, one must understand that death audit is a time-taking process.
“While each death review may take at least 15 minutes, mistake would cost deceased’s kin dear. For example, if a cancer patient on chemotherapy turns positive during the course of treatment and dies of cancer and if we report it as Covid death, he may lose mediclaim. Correct accounting of death is very important,” Mohanty said.
On the backlog of cases awaiting audit, he said, “The pendency is dynamic as deaths have not stopped completely and the fight against Covid is still on.”
Sources said the fatality report may remain high throughout August as death audit has been expedited and so is proportion of release of death count daily. The state-level review committee is auditing around 100 deaths daily. “Because of backlog of death audit, daily figure being put out against districts seems to be almost matching the number of infections on that day. It has nothing to do with the fatality (if any) of that particular day. So, infection and fatality now being released may hugely mismatch. That’s why we are clarifying on Twitter that daily fatality reflects details of past deaths,” said a government official.
The government confirmed 66 more deaths, taking the cumulative count to 6,302. On Friday, the state reported 1208 new infections from 69,369 samples tested, registering test positivity rate of 1.74%.