Putting an end to the controversy over West Bengal Coronavirus figures, the Union Health Ministry on Thursday morning listed on its website the number of COVID-19 deaths in the state as 133.
This comes even as the state government continued to put out two figures — 61 people, who died of Coronavirus and 72 linked deaths.
On the Centre listing 133 deaths in the state, Bengal home secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay said, “I don’t have the Centre and state data with me so I can’t say anything. But we are trying our best to ensure truthful convergence. The chief secretary explained yesterday that all figures have been extremely scientifically converged in Bengal.”
Meanwhile, the updated ministry data shows 144 deaths due to Coronavirus in West Bengal.
The revised death toll on the Health Ministry website comes after Centre in a strongly-worded letter to the Mamata government said that West Bengal has the highest rate of COVID-19 fatalities, low testing and worrying instances of attacks on frontline workers fighting the coronavirus crisis.
“The response to COVID-19 in the state of West Bengal is characterised by a very low rate of testing in proportion to the population, and a very high rate of mortality of 13.2 per cent for the state, by far the highest for any state,” the Central government said.
“This is a reflection of poor surveillance, detection and testing in the state. There is also a need to increase random testing in crowded clusters,” Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla said in a two-page letter to West Bengal Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha.
“Lockdown violations have been noted in the cities of Kolkata and Howrah by specific groups in specific localities with media reports of the ‘corona warriors’ including even the police being attacked,” the letter said.
“Instances of problems faced due to ostracism of health care professionals and lack of quarantine facilities is also worrying,” it added.
Bhalla’s letter came after reports submitted by two Inter-Ministerial Central Teams (IMCTs), which were sent to Kolkata and Jalpaiguri districts on April 20 and returned on Monday.
The IMCT deputed to West Bengal had noted discrepancies in the number of Coronavirus cases reported by the state in its medical bulletins and its communications with the Central government.
The central team had found that 72 COVID patients, who expired, were classified as death due to co-morbidities.
Earlier in the week, the West Bengal government admitted to faults in its system of collecting data on Coronavirus patients saying it was “not perfect and that some cases may have been missed out.”
However, the state’s Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha quickly dismissed the faults saying it cannot add these new figures to the existing death toll.
Eleven COVID-19 patients have died in the last 24 hours, the chief secretary said, raising the government death count to 61. This includes 33 Coronavirus cases confirmed by the audit committee. If 72 co-morbidity deaths are added, the tally shoots up to 133 but the state is not adding the co-morbidity fatalities, he had said.
On April 24, the chief secretary had said the death audit committee had examined the deaths of 105 COVID-19 patients ever since it was set up on April 3. Of 105, COVID-19 was the cause of death of 33 patients. The rest of the 72 deaths were caused by co-morbidties and COVID-19 was only an “incidental” finding.
Addressing a press briefing, Sinha said, “We are quoting the right figure before you. (The 72) co-morbidity deaths will no more come to us because hospitals have been told not to report comorbidity deaths… So they are reporting the death figures and we are quoting the death figures. Where is the issue?”
The admission on discrepancies came after the members of the Inter-Ministerial Central Team (IMCT), which left for New Delhi on Monday morning, wrote a letter to Sinha asking the state government not to downplay the spread of the virus and to be transparent and consistent in reporting figures.
The central teams had questioned state’s decision to form an audit committee to decide on COVID-19 fatalities.
Interestingly, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has completely distanced herself from the committee, saying she had no idea about it or its members.