Kolkata: Mamata government fudges death toll

Kolkata: For the first time, Bengal has officially linked 57 deaths to coronavirus. The state government revealed that according to its death audit committee, 57 COVID-19 patients had died, but asserted that 39 of these were due to co-morbidities. Only 18 of the deaths were because of COVID-19, Bengal Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha told the media. "Balance 39 deaths were due to comorbidities and COVID-19 was incidental," Sinha said. The revelation comes on a day the central inter-ministerial team asked for details on the death audit committee and raised questions over Bengal's coronavirus figures.

The central team wanted to know if the committee, set up to certify deaths due to COVID-19, was recommended by the central government's Indian Council of Medical Research. In a letter to the Chief Secretary earlier today, the central team's head Apurva Chandra asked for records of all COVID-19 cases in which the death was attributed to some other cause by the committee.

Chandra had also questioned the time taken by the committee to take such decisions and "whether such a committee to ascertain cause of death exists for any other disease" in Bengal. He also referred to the Bengal Principal Secretary, Health, in his presentation yesterday, saying "if a COVID patient dies in a road accident, he cannot be said to have died of COVID".

"The IMCT did not find the reasoning convincing as there is no comparison between a road death and a death in a hospital due to a disease," Mr Chandra wrote to the Chief Secretary.