The Tamil Nadu Government has announced that 444 deaths in the Greater Chennai Region are additionally attributed to the coronavirus after a reconciliation committee probing discrepancies in death count since March made a recommendation that missed out fatalities due to "co-morbidities" should be added to the toll.
The correction takes the death toll in total in the city to 1939. It's a 30% jump in the number deaths in Chennai from the cumulative number till Tuesday.
Recoveries remained significant as 4,910 people were discharged after treatment, taking the total number of those cured in the state to 1,31,583. Chennai reported 1,171 new COVID-19 positive cases today, pushing the count to 89,561.
In the daily news bulletin today, the state health department said: “The committee has recommended that an additional 444 deaths would also fall under the category of COVID death as per the ICMR guidelines though such cases were medically considered died due to co-morbidity or other terminal illness.”
According to state bureaucrats, the discrepancy had emerged over time due to different standards of declaring deaths of people with Covid-19. While some deaths were earlier rested on co-morbidities of patients, some were attributed to the pandemic.
The committee recommended that the 444 deaths would also fall under the category of Covid-19 deaths as per the ICMR guidelines "though such cases were medically considered died due to co-morbiditiy or other terminal illness," a Health Department bulletin said. "The committee, in consonance with the guidelines issued by WHO and the Central government, found that 444 deaths occurred from March 1 till mid-June."
"After scrutinising the Chennai Corporation death registry, (we) found the difference comparing it with the bulletins issued by the state health department," Tamil Nadu Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan said.
This led to a growing divergence in the number of deaths and those declared as the pandemic’s death toll. Reported in June, the discrepancies were handed over to a reconciliation committee headed by Dr TS Selvavinayagam, Director of Public Health and Preventive Medicine.
The addition of deaths to Chennai will lead to a bump in the mortality rate in Tamil Nadu because of the Coronavirus, a statistic that the state health minister had often highlighted to underscore efforts to prevent deaths. As of Tuesday, the Tamil Nadu mortality rate was at 1.45, which has now jumped to 1.68 because of Wednesday’s additions.
(With inputs from PTI)
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