Missing Covid-19 Deaths in Maharashtra: 'We Were First Ones to Realise Data Discrepancy,' Says State Chief Secy

Coming clean on the massive data discrepancy in the number of deaths reported from Maharashtra, state's chief secretary Ajoy Mehta said the government had realised the problem much before anyone else. "Last week itself, we had issued orders to all the district administrations and municipal corporations to reconcile their data. We have nothing to hide," he told CNN-News18 in an exclusive interview.

Maharashtra has declared 862 additional Covid-19 deaths in Mumbai and 466 more in the rest of the state after a massive data reconciliation exercise. The process ended on Tuesday, and the outcome was declared by the administration on Tuesday evening. With this, the death rate in Maharashtra has gone up to 4.8 per cent. The total number of deaths in the state now stands at 5,537.

Explaining the reasons behind the data discrepancy, and the causes for undertaking this exercise, Mehta said, "Initially, there were only two labs. Today, we have 90. Earlier, the data used to be noted manually. Now, it is being entered electronically. There were many platforms on which it was put, now it is only one platform. For all these reasons, there were discrepancies."

When asked if the government didn't give out the data earlier because of the fear of showing increased number of deaths, he said, "We have nothing to hide. These persons were reported as Covid cases. A death certificate was issued about it. But previously, the committee interpreted it as cardiac arrest, not Covid death. As per the epidemic management act, it has to be entered as epidemic death. That wasn't done. That is why we asked the district administrations to reconcile all the deaths. If there would have been fear, the death certificates would have been missing. It is just that they weren't reported on the Covid portal."

He said that the government had issued these orders on June 11, much before the Opposition had raised the matter.

Just a day ago, Maharashtra's recovery rate crossed the 50 per cent mark. Over 5,000 were shown discharged by the government. When asked if any change in discharge policy led to this, he said, "This is completely attributed to data reconciliation. There is no change in discharge policy. The amount of data is so much that, at times, data management takes time. My target is to chase patients. Data management is important, but not as important as chasing the virus."