Data on Bengal’s Covid-19 cases appears opaque, raises questions

The West Bengal government said on Thursday that only five people had died of Covid-19 in the state till Thursday afternoon and the number of people to test positive had gone up by 12 in a day to touch 107. The data, was however, taken with a pinch of salt by many citizens with questions being raised about the government’s policy.

The government had said on Monday it will consult an expert committee of doctors before linking any fatality to the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), after allegations that it was suppressing information about the deadly infection.

“We have formed a committee of five doctors who will decide the actual cause of death. They are the experts, I am not. We do not want to create panic among people. Please trust the doctors,” chief minister Mamata Banerjee had said on Monday.

Unlike other states, the West Bengal government is reluctant to attribute the deaths of Covid-19 patients with pre-existing conditions like heart disease or diabetes to the virus alone, though experts say that such conditions make the Covid-19 disease deadlier.

HT has accessed an order issued on April 5, according to which doctors signing death certificates must fill out a form which is then scrutinized by the committee of five doctors. Those signing the certificates are also required to attach 24 test reports, including for scrub typhus, dengue, malaria, urea, creatinine, blood, urine, CPK (enzymes in blood to diagnose heart attack) and Procalcitonin (substance in blood produced by bacterial infection). Some of the other tests reports asked for are SPo2 with time (oxygen saturation), ABG with time (arterial blood gas test), USG of abdomen and D Dimer (test for serious blood clot) CT scan reports of the thorax and a liver function test.

On Wednesday this week, the chief minister announced that Covid-19 cases were restricted to only 7 identified pockets in West Bengal. Additionally, it set up a data analysis cell comprising 9 members including six doctors, to collect and collate data on a real time basis, “examine it and detect patterns and under-currents”.

Since the government has neither confirmed nor denied reports of 8 other fatalities and set up the data analysis cell, West Bengal’s official death toll stood at just five till Thursday evening. .

The first person to test positive was an 18-year-old UK returnee on March 17.

The first death was of a 57-year-old at a private hospital happened on March 23. At that time, cumulative positives stood at 7.

On March 27, with five new persons testing positive, the cumulative number went up to 15.

ON March 31, with five new people testing positive, the cumulative number went up to 27 and the number of dead stood at 3.

The format of the daily health bulletin issued by the state government was first changed on April 1, when two more deaths were reported.

The bulletin stuck to 3 fatalities, and appended a note, which read, “Two male persons both aged 57 years and one male person aged 62 years all having Severe Acute Respiratory Illness expired. One of them had Chronic Renal Failure, another had Respiratory Failure and the third one had hypertension and other co-morbid conditions. They had all reportedly tested positive, which is subject to confirmation.”

From that day on, the government began to make a distinction between those dead people, who had first tested positive, and those who died of Covid-19 and those who were infected with Covid-19 but died of co-morbidity.

The bulletin was still providing the cumulative number of people testing positive, which, on April 1, stood at 37. But for the next two days, the government issued no bulletin and instead held press conferences at the state secretariat in the evenings.

From April 4, the format of the bulletin changed entirely. The government began to give data only for ‘active cases’ and made no mention of the total figure. This led to confusion over the number of total positives, as the union ministry of health and family welfare’s website gave state-wise data for the cumulative figure. For example, on April 4, the state’s bulletin put the number of ‘active cases’ at 49, but the union ministry’s website put the state’s cumulative figure at 69.

There were no bulletins on April 2 and 3 and, March 31 onwards, the bulletins started releasing late, often after 9 pm.

From the April 4 bulletin onwards, the column for the dead was removed. There was no bulletin on April 6.

However, breaking her long silence on the number of Nizamuddin Markaz returnees in the state, the chief minister gave some figures on April 8.

“Around 10 to 12 days ago we had quietly quarantined 108 foreigners and 69 people from Bengal who had attended the Delhi congregation. The foreigners had come from countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar. All 177 have been kept in a quarantine facility developed at the Haj Centre,” Banerjee said.