oppn parties Bihar Reports 3951 Additional Covid Deaths On Reconciliation Of Data

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Bihar Reports 3951 Additional Covid Deaths On Reconciliation Of Data

By Linus Garg
First publised on 2021-06-10 08:29:18

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.

After an audit, Bihar today revised the Covid death toll figures drastically to add 'previously uncounted' 3951 deaths. As a result of this, India's single day death tally jumped to 6148, a figure that immediately raised alarm all across the world. Actually, India reported just 2197 Covid deaths on Tuesday. But Bihar's bungling meant India had to report an inflated figure.

This kind of bungling is unacceptable at any time. Although many other states also periodically revise their figures due to what is termed as data reconciliation (Maharashtra, for one, has added more than 5000 death to its daily tally over 12 days), such wholesale addition in case of Bihar means that even the 'data reconciliation' is being carried out there after a long time. Reporting of genuine figures is a must in predicting the spread or the ferocity of infection and it helps in policy making. Hence, data reconciliation must be an ongoing process. Bihar, it seems, has done it for the first time since the pandemic started.

As per the latest figures, the death tally was highest in Patna taking its toll to 2303, followed by Muzaffarpur (609), Nalanda (463), Begusarai (454), Purvi Champaran (425), Dharbanga (342) and Madhubani (317).

The incidents of floating bodies in the Ganga and other rivers in Bihar and UP and now this disclosure of additional deaths in Bihar, along with the ground reality of queues at crematoriums and burial grounds provides hints that there might have been massive underreporting of deaths due to Covid in these two states. Since it also not clear whether the two states have an ongoing data reconciliation system, it is certain that more deaths will be reported in the future as and when the data is reconciled. The Centre must tell the states to make their systems and processes more robust and report accurate figures after proper verification without such long gaps. 

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