Confusion over West Bengal's Covid-19 Death Stats as Official Data Includes Co-morbid Cases

Kolkata: As the West Bengal government continues to claim a total of 61 confirmed COVID-19 deaths and 72 deaths due to co-morbidity, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Tuesday reiterated that the total number of deaths due to the infection in the state stands at 133. According to the Centre's overall figure, the state's death toll includes those fatalities reported on account of co-morbidity.

The ministry's data also speaks of the term "above 70% co-morbid condition", but does not specify the exact co-morbid percentage of each state and uploaded the figure of 133 COVID-19 deaths in West Bengal as of Tuesday.

The graphic section of the ministry's website has a pop-up window that details figures on the number of positive cases, cured cases and death toll. In case of West Bengal, it says the number of positive/active cases is 980, the number of cured cases is 218, and the death toll is 133.

The Bengal government has formed an audit committee to ascertain the actual cause of deaths -- as per this committee, the state says only 61 deaths can be directly attributed to COVID-19, while the rest of them died on account of co-morbidity.

The co-morbidity examination was done based on treatment history, laboratory investigation reports and death certificates. As per the audit committee, the co-morbidities were cardiomyopathy with chronic kidney disease, renal failure, cerebro-vascular accident, acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, left ventricular failure in severe hypertension, multi-organ failure in Type-11 diabetes and hypertension, red cell aplasia in a case of severe diabetes and hypertension and severe diabetes with hypertension with hyponatremia.

But the Inter-Ministerial Central Teams (IMCT) that visited various parts of the state to check its coronavirus preparation said the mortality rate is 12.8%, which is the highest among COVID-19 patients in the country. They also accused the Bengal government of discrepancies in reporting cases, a lack of testing and weak surveillance.

Raising serious concerns over the state’s discrepancies in updating the daily COVID-19 statistics, IMCT team leader Apurva Chandra in a letter to state Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha said, “We appreciate the state government’s decision (on April 30) that all deaths of COVID-19 patients would be indicated in the daily statistics and the death certificate would be issued by the hospital with the committee of doctors only examining a random sample.

"This is a big step towards transparency. At the same time it raises the total death count of COVID patients in the state to 105 on April 30. For a total reported number of 816 COVID patients, the mortality rate of 12.7% is by far the highest in the country. This is extremely high mortality rate is a clear indication of low testing and weak surveillance and tracking," he added.