Bengaluru's Covid-19 cases up as BBMP hides discharge data

The state health department has said it has not been receiving discharge figures from the BBMP, a reason why the city’s active Covid-19 case count is inflated.

Insisting that it has not been receiving discharge figures from the civic body since June 15, the department said whatever few discharge figures reflected under Bengaluru Urban are being supplied by the District Health Officer (DHO).

Bengaluru has been showing the largest number of active cases in the past few days. With no accurate discharge figures, it is difficult to estimate the number of beds available for treatment.

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While there were 66 patients discharged from Victoria Hospital alone on Friday, the state bulletin accounts for only 21 discharges. The figure is supplied by the Bengaluru Urban DHO, whereas the BBMP gave no numbers.

With such a large number of unaccounted patients at one hospital, it would not be harder to imagine the numbers across various medical facilities.

Apart from Victoria, discharge figures need to be collated from Bowring and Lady Curzon, Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases, CV Raman General, Jayanagar General, KC General, ESI Rajajinagar, Narayana Health, BGS General, MS Ramaiah, and Sakra hospitals. These are just some of the hospitals, public and private, which are housing Covid patients.

Amid claims by the state that 200 recovery cases remain unaccounted, discrepancies exist in the discharge figures in the BBMP’s bulletin and the list from Victoria and other hospitals.

A senior official of the health department on condition of anonymity said: “For the past few days, zero COVID patients have been discharged in the BBMP limits. It is not because there have been no recoveries, but because the BBMP is not sharing the discharge date with the health department.”

“Whenever hospitals put out the list of discharged patients, it is the responsibility of the surveillance officers of both the BBMP and Bengaluru Urban DHO office to sift through the patients’ details and sort outpatients living within the BBMP limits and outside the BBMP limits,” the officer added.

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He said the BBMP recently had a change of guard with a new surveillance officer. The civic body must collect data from hospitals other than Victoria, but it is clueless on who to contact for data.

BBMP Commissioner B H Anil Kumar said the civic body’s job is to transport patients to hospitals and make sure they are registered, while it is the state’s job to collect discharge data from the
hospitals.