Now that the Supreme Court has approved the ex gratia policy of the Union government to pay ₹50,000 to the next of kin of those who have died of COVID-19, the State government is going to face an uphill task in identifying the actual deaths due to the viral infection.
The onus, it appears, is largely on the kin of the deceased to prove their cases.
Though the DRO (district revenue officer) has been told to form a committee to establish the cause of death and finalise the list, the problem seems to be that the cause of death in a large number of cases has not been described as ‘death due to COVID-19’.
The apex court direction to make the payment within 30 days of receiving an application, makes the task even more difficult.
An SOP (standard operating procedure) has been designed, which is to be submitted along with the application to the committee. It includes submission of the RTPCR test report, hospital discharge summary and other things. The court directive is clear that even in the case of a death at home, if it is proven as due to COVID-19, then the State cannot deny payment, says Principal of Andhra Medical College Dr. P.V. Sudhakar.
Families can approach the committee in case of discrepancies in the cause of death shown. The committee, after examining the medical reports, can take a call.
Discrepancy in figures
A pertinent question that arises now is whether the COVID-19 death count will go up, contradicting the deaths being shown in the official statistics. There are already indications that the death toll has been fudged and reports have emerged from all across the country, including Visakhapatnam district, in this regard.
The district had suffered the worst during the second wave, especially in April and May this year. Officially, the COVID death count in Visakhapatnam as on October 26 was 1,096 but the death certificates issued by the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC) tell a different story.
On an average, over the last 10 years (before the outbreak of the COVID-9) the GVMC has been recording a death count varying between 850 and 950 per month. But in April and May when the pandemic was at its peak, the corporation recorded 1,352 and 4,306 deaths respectively.
Though the increase was abnormal, COVID-related deaths shown in both the months put together were 299.
The officials have no clear answer for this abnormality, but say that the discrepancy in figures is due to the count taken on the basis of the RTPCR tests. Fatalities only from among the cases identified as positive through the RTPCR test were recorded as COVID-19 deaths and the results were uploaded into the ICMR website. Those who tested positive through CT scans or rapid antigen tests were not included in the ICMR list and, therefore, the fatalities among such cases were not recorded under COVID deaths.
Another reason attributed to the discrepancy is that about 30% in the RTPCR and over 40% in the rapid antigen tests had tested negative, despite they being COVID positive.
A senior doctor from KGH also says that many patients had gone to hospitals very late and died even without getting tested, and did not reflect officially as COVID deaths.
This puts the onus on the bereaved families to prove their case. “Private hospitals were never forthcoming and many did not even bother to give the discharge summary or case sheets. Moreover, during that period there was a lot of uncertainty and people were in a state of confusion. Now, it will be a Herculean task to prove it,” says Srinivasa Rao (name changed) who had lost his father and brother to the pandemic.
“In the case of my father, the hospital people said it was due to a heart attack and for my brother they said it was pulmonary embolism. But whether it was due to COVID-19 was not mentioned. And now how do I prove it?” he wonders.