Tamil Nadu adds 444 'unaccounted' deaths to Covid-19 toll

As many as 444 deaths in Tamil Nadu from March 1 to mid-July, which were not unaccounted for earlier, were on Wednesday added to Tamil Nadu’s Covid-19 toll, pushing the death toll from the novel coronavirus to 3,144.

The move comes following completion of reconciliation of deaths by the Health Department and the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC), which maintains the city’s death registry.

Wednesday also saw the state reporting its biggest single-day spike with swab samples of 5,849 persons returning positive. The state’s tally stood at 1,86,492 patients, including 1,31,583 discharges and 3,144 deaths. The number of active cases were 51,765.

While Chennai recorded 1,171 cases, its neighbouring districts of Kanchipuram, Tiruvallur, and Chengalpattu and other major cities like Coimbatore, Madurai, and districts like Thoothukudi, Ranipet, Tiruchirapalli, and Virudhunagar reported massive spike in numbers.

The reconciliation process was initiated after media reports, NGOs and Opposition parties flagged “huge gap” in numbers mentioned in the daily Covid-19 bulletin released by the Health Department and the “deaths due to Coronavirus infection” registered by the GCC at its crematoriums.

The parties had also accused the government of “under-reporting” Covid-19 deaths, but the AIADMK dispensation dismissed the allegations and said a committee will go into the issue.

“We have added 444 deaths which were earlier unaccounted for to our official Covid-19 death toll. This has been added following conclusion of the process by a committee headed by a senior official. The deaths that have been added now occurred between March 1 and mid-July,” Health Secretary Dr. J. Radhakrishnan said.

Radhakrishnan told DH that the reconciliation committee has now been made permanent and will meet every week to reconcile the figures, if any. “The committee will meet every week now to ensure there is no gap or any issues. The doctors and officials will sit every week and reconcile the figures if needed. This is to ensure that there is no discrepancy,” he said.

The 444 deaths that have been added on Wednesday occurred within the limits of GCC after the committee looked at 538 “unaccounted” deaths that were said to be due to Covid-19.

Radhakrishnan said all the death of Covid-19 positive patients are declared as Covid-19 death irrespective of underlying or antecedent cause of death as per ICMR guidelines.

“The committee has recommended that an additional 444 deaths would also fall under the category of Covid-19 death, as per the ICMR guidelines, though such cases were medically considered died due to co-morbidity or other terminal illness,” the bulletin said.

Officials said the discrepancy could be a result of “miscommunication” between various government agencies and hospitals. Experts and doctors had expressed surprise at the “discrepancy”, wondering how there could be such a huge gap.

Meanwhile, the state government has decided to conduct pool testing of Covid-19 samples in areas with a positivity rate of two to five per cent as part of its efforts in detecting early the infections caused by coronavirus.

In an advisory issued by Dr T S Selvavinayagam, Director of Public Health, to nodal officers of government and private laboratories in the state, said pool testing can be carried out in areas which has less positivity rate.

Pool testing will now be conducted in 21 of the 37 districts, whose positivity rate of coronavirus infections is between 2 to 5 per cent, officials said. Pool testing, under which samples of up to five individuals are tested together, has already been approved by the ICMR.

Dr Selvavinayagam said pool testing will not increase the testing capacity but will help in early detection of Covid-19 cases in the community, besides ensuring cost-effectiveness and improving the turn-around time (TAT) of the samples tested.

Officials said according to the method, the samples will be tested together and if the pool tests negative, all samples will be considered negative. In case of positive, they will be isolated.