JOIN USRelease real Covid data: High Court tells Gujarat govt
The Gujarat High Court on Friday asked the Vijay Rupani-led BJP government to announce the real number of Covid-19 positive patients, number of deaths and fatalities due to comorbidities so that "faith and trust can be restored in the minds of public".
The special division bench of the high court comprising Chief Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Bhargav Karia made these observations after reprimanding the government for the gap in the figures on paper and on the ground.
"We know that the state is not responsible for increase in upward swing of Covid patients, but at the same time the state should publish data by making efforts to find out actual number of Covid positive cases," the bench stated in the order.
After a few months into the pandemic last year, the state government had stopped including the death of Covid patients with comorbid conditions from the list of daily fatalities. This brought down the fatality rate, which was soaring at the national level. Since then, the number of deaths in government records has been low but crematoriums in the state were running round-the-clock to cremate bodies. On many occasions, the government defended its move stating that those last rites of patients with comorbid conditions also have to follow Covid guidelines.
"The state must come up publicly in a transparent and fair manner with complete details with regard to availability and modalities of the required amenities, medication and related infrastructure for the treatment of the Covid patients, who require either facility of Covid care centre, hospitalisation with oxygen, ventilator, medicines, etc...State should take up the onus of declaring the accurate data so as to eliminate the others from propagating the same with spice and causing panic amongst the people," the order notes.