An expert committee appointed by the Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan himself has come out in protest against the government for excluding many who died of COVID-19 from the death list.
The committee has demanded that the decision be reversed and that the deaths so far be audited again. All the victims of coronavirus should be included on the list of COVID deaths, it said.
Manorama had on August 3 reported that the government was excluding some COVID patients from the list under a new classification system intended to show a low casualty figure. The government had then argued that it was following the guidelines of the World Health Organization in preparing the list. But, now, the protest of the expert committee has put the government in a spot.
What the committee has said
» Changing the criteria for inclusion on the list of COVID deaths without proper explanation at a time when the coronavirus is claiming an increasing number of people will raise suspicion in the minds of the general public and the scientific community. The authenticity of the official information will be questioned.
» The procedure should be in accordance with the criteria prescribed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). Scientific guidelines should be prepared for preparing the list.
» The WHO and the ICMR have recommended that deaths should be included on the list if COVID is the first or second leading cause of death.
» The Kerala government changed the criteria for inclusion on July 20. People who had COVID were excluded if they had other illnesses at the time of their death. It also decided to re-examine samples of those who died while undergoing treatment for COVID. The test may turn negative if the death occurs three or four weeks after a person is infected with the coronavirus. Such deaths are also excluded.
Health dept’s numbers prove govt's misrepresentation of figures
The Department of Health's figures provide evidence of the government distorting COVID death figures.
The department’s report on COVID clusters in Thiruvananthapuram says that there were 34 deaths as on July 31, but the government's figures show only 22. While 24 people on the health department’s list were cremated at the Santhi Kavadam public crematorium of the Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation, the government’s official tally included only six of them.
102 deaths not on govt list
According to the state government, 126 COVID deaths have been reported in Kerala so far. However, reports from the districts say that 228 people have so far died of the infection.
On Wednesday, Kerala reported 1,212 new COVID cases, taking the total number of cases in the state to 38,144.
