Tamil Nadu now records COVID-19 deaths left out earlier, sees spike

After much delay, the Tamil Nadu government has started recording deaths due to COVID-19 that were earlier left out.

In the daily media bulletin issued on Saturday (June 13), the state listed 30 deaths due to COVID-19, of which seven were of patients who died weeks before. According to the data, people who died on May 24, 28, and 31 as well as on June 2, 3, 5, and 7 were listed on Saturday (June 13).

Similarly, the state added previous deaths to its Sunday (June 14) toll, making it 38, the highest single-day record so far. The death of patients who died on June 5, 11 and 12 were reported on Sunday.

“The delay in accounting the deaths of the people was due to the delay in communication between the government and private institutions. After the patient dies, the hospital has to send all the details to the government and then the government has to validate it before accounting it. Thus the delay,” an official privy to the developments said.

Earlier, several reports had suggested that the deaths of a number of COVID-19 patients were not being recorded in the official tally. The deaths due to COVID were around 20 or fewer than that till Friday (June 12). Subsequently, the state government also accepted the discrepancies and reasoned that it was due to a communication gap between government departments.

A committee headed by Dr Vadivelan conducted a detailed investigation. The initial investigations suggested that around 236 deaths that the Chennai Corporation recorded due to COVID-19 had not been communicated to the health department and they were not accounted officially.

Besides the communication lapse between the departments, the discrepancies in the data were also attributed to cases from private hospitals.

”While the health department and the corporation maintain separate registers, the reconciliation of data of deaths due to various reasons is done once in a year. Now, since we are doing it daily, we have asked the private hospitals as well to update then and there,” the official added.

Apart from the discrepancies in recording the deaths, the Greater Chennai Corporation has again found itself in a state of limbo. According to reports, the local body was not able to identify 277 COVID-19 patients who had tested positive between May 23 and June 11.

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According to the protocol, soon after a patient is tests positive for COVID-19, the details of the patient would be sent to the Director of Public Health, who will in turn send the details to the local body (Greater Chennai Corporation).

In the case of 277 patients, the Corporation could not trace the people because of the wrong address or contact numbers given at the time of getting tested.

The local body has also lodged a complaint with the police in this regard. According to the police, they are in the process of finding the details of the people with the available details and have also roped in the cyber crime team to identify the people who went missing.