Covid fatalities: Gujarat still counts on old method

AHMEDABAD: After the Supreme Court rap, has the method of counting Covid deaths changed in Gujarat? Not much, indicated senior officers of the state government.

Top sources said that ‘Covid deaths audit committees’ are still active in cities and districts to ascertain how many patients had comorbidities and how many were in the high-risk category.

“All hospitals send the data to the central repository at city or district levels. After verifying the numbers, these committees send them to the state health department for consolidation,” said a senior doctor of a city-based hospital. “There is no new notification on counting deaths after the first one which was based on the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) stipulations.”

The guidelines, issued in 2020, had simply laid down the method of recording Covid deaths to understand the underlying cause. However, experts said that the guidelines were misconstrued by the states including Gujarat to record only those deaths of which ‘the only cause was Covid’, devoid of comorbidities such as hypertension, diabetes, or cancer, and factors such as old age.

“The committees still meet to decide how many deaths were caused solely due to the impact of Covid,” said a senior government official on the condition of anonymity. “However, we can say that we are not hiding the death figures.”

Manoj Aggarwal, ACS (health), said that he will have to check the latest rules. “I’ll get back with the details,” he told TOI.

Gujarat had recorded 5,314 “official” deaths in April and May last year, accounting for half the official tally of 10,614. In the ‘third wave’ starting mid-January, the state has recorded 470 deaths so far. Experts point out that the method should be more transparent to give a true and fair picture.