The COVID-19 death count in the State has again raised questions on authenticity with the Directorate of Health Services adding 68 deaths that occurred from August last year till date at the South Goa District Hospital, claiming that they were reported late. This is not the first time that Goa has seen this late reporting of COVID deaths and this places a doubt on the veracity of the figures.
The scenario as the lay person understands it is such. A person is tested positive and that becomes a statistic for the government. The patient is either hospitalised or if asymptomatic remains in home isolation for the period recommended by the health authorities. If hospitalised then a patient is discharged on recovering or in case of death the body is released to the family and the funeral undertaken under controlled conditions. In the case of a person in home isolation, there is telemonitoring by government doctors or private doctors. If the patient shows signs of worsening then hospitalisation if recommended, otherwise at the end of the isolation period the person is declared cured of COVID-19 and can return to interacting with society.
The above scenarios offers a minute chance of a gap in delayed reporting or not reporting of deaths due to COVID by the hospital authorities. That such a lapse has recurred indicates that no checks were put in place when the delay was first noted. So, how then did 68 cases of COVID-19 deaths over a period of a year get reported late? In June this year 72 COVID-19 deaths were added to the count over a period of two days due to the same reason of late reporting. At that time it was private hospital that had delayed the reporting and that government had issued notices of show cause to ten private hospitals for this delay and had also threatened action against the hospitals.
Will such action be now taken on the South Goa District Hospital or will different measures be followed in this case, it being a government hospital? The same government that had been stern with the private hospitals should also be stern with the government hospital. If that was a failure of the private sector that the government could point a finger at, this is its own failure and it has to own up and not silently add the additional figure of deaths to the total, hoping it will be overlooked.
Goa has 100 per cent death reporting, with hospitals and nursing homes mandated to register every death with the local body. Against this background, COVID deaths going unreported for the second time is very strange. Besides, since these deaths were of the past one year, why were they not added to the figure of delayed deaths that was revealed in June this year? Did it take the authorities another three months to realise that there were more deaths that had not been counted? During the COVID crisis, the Chief Minister had said that “There is not a single COVID death which has not been recorded in PHCs.” How, then did 68 deaths in the South Goa District Hospital go unreported over a period of months?
Underreporting of COVID-19 deaths in India and across the world had been discussed during the height of the second wave. It was during that period Goa had added the first lot of delayed cases to the figure. Goa, at least appears to be ensuring that every death is counted, with these additions. The correct figure of deaths is not to scare people further, but will aid the government prepare for the predicted third wave. We cannot overlook that in all, there were 140 deaths that were reported late and added to the total much later. In a State where there have been 3289 COVID deaths, this is 4.25 per cent of the total. It is not a small figure.
