Gujarat govt refutes report on under-reporting of Covid-19 deaths, claims it doesn't hide figures

A report revealed the government issued a record 61,000 more death certificates in 71 days of the second wave

A day after a news report indicated under-reporting of coronavirus-related deaths in Gujarat, the state government on Saturday termed the report as "inaccurate" and questioned the "methodology" of arriving at the conclusion.

The report revealed the government issued a record 61,000 more death certificates in 71 days of the second wave compared to the same period when the first wave had hit the state last year.

On Friday, a Gujarati newspaper, Divya Bhaskar, reported that between March 1 and May 10, municipalities and municipal corporations issued a record 1,23,871 death certificates, compared to only 58,000 in the same period last year. The report stated that the government issued only 4,218 certificates where the reason for death was shown as Covid-19. The paper claimed that these data were obtained from 33 districts and eight cities.

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Refuting the report, additional chief secretary, home and revenue, Pankaj Kumar told reporters in Gandhinagar: "We want to tell you that death, registration and certification are three different processes which always have gaps among them. The methodology of drawing a conclusion based on death certificates issued in last March, April and May and the same period this year is defective."

Kumar said in the online system of birth and death registration, there are chances of multiple registrations.

"...we can't deny the possibility of multiple registrations of deaths due to differences in the person's place of actual death and native place. We have found such duplicity and based on a small sample, we can say this is about 5%."

Kumar said during the lockdown, the government made changes in issuing death certificates that included waiving late fee and submission of affidavits, in cases of late registration, for one year that is till July 2021.

He said the paper didn't take this aspect into consideration. "The deaths that occurred in that period are being registered even today...there is a possibility of registration based on which there is the possibility of issuing death certificates. Therefore, death certificates issued in that period and comparing them with total death is wrong," he said.

The minister of state for home Pradipsinh Jadeja also stated in the press conference that "time of death, registration and issuing of certificates are three different aspects. All these three things combined together to show death figures and analysis is inappropriate. The data of the year 2020 has no accuracy at all in this report."

He claimed that the government is not hiding anything. However, Jadeja and Kumar refused to share any other figure with the reporters.