To the official statistics of Covid-19 fatalities given on Monday night, the Madhya Pradesh government added 1,478 deaths as a backlog.
According to the health department’s daily briefing, private hospitals recorded 762 backlog deaths and government hospitals reported 508 in various areas, while 208 individuals died in home isolation.
There have been 10,506 fatalities registered in MP thus far, with a mortality rate of 1.33 percent.
Medical education minister Vishwas Sarang said, “The deaths were reported late as health officials were focussing on providing treatment to infected people. With the decrease in positivity rate in the state, the health officials conducted a death audit and found a backlog. It is nothing wrong that we focussed more on saving lives than counting deaths.”
Opposition leaders and experts have been attacking the state government for hiding deaths due to Covid-19 in April and May and later adjusting the numbers in June.
“In June, the death rate increased to 8%. The crematorium and burial ground data, which showed higher number of deaths in April and May as compared to data shared by health department exposed the lie of the state government. In many districts, more than five deaths have been reported in a day but no cremation and burial was done as per Covid-19 protocol,” said SR Azad, a health activist.
Opposition leaders alleged the BJP-led state government wanted to hide data and that’s why they didn’t share break-up of deaths district-wise. “The state government wanted to hide that in Bhopal and Indore, people died in large numbers in the absence of oxygen beds and ventilators. Adding backlog of deaths has proved that they hid the data, but still there are many deaths which have not been added in the list. We will raise this issue in the monsoon session as we have real data,” said PC Sharma, a Congress MLA.
