Congress demands audit of Covid-19 deaths

KPCC president D K Shivakumar on Tuesday demanded an audit into the deaths due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I demand an audit into deaths that have occurred due to Covid-19 or not, for want of beds and so on,” Shivakumar told reporters. “Some 164 people have died. Officials should at least go to the homes of each one,” he said.

Shivakumar attacked the BJP government for “utter failure” in handling the pandemic. “How many ICU beds are there? Which hospital has what? It’s not enough if just the health minister and revenue minister issue press statements every day. All ministers and officials should work on a war footing,” he said, adding that the government should bring out a whitepaper on the work it has done, including the contribution received under PM-CARES.

‘Mismatch of numbers’

Former minister Priyank Kharge accused the government of ‘tampering’ with the data on Covid-19 patients to hide the true extent of the pandemic in the state.

Taking to Twitter, Kharge said that there were huge differences in the number of patients testing positive and the number declared by the government in its daily bulletin.

According to him, while the Parihara portal at the Kalaburagi district level reported 1,023 positive cases on April 19, the number was only 513 in the Covid-19 bulletin. “The number of +ve patients that are entered in Parihara portal by officials is more than twice reported in the media bulletin. Why the difference?” Kharge said.