Tamil Nadu sets up panel to probe ‘unaccounted’ Covid-19 fatalities

Tamil Nadu’s low mortality rate has come under scrutiny, with the state government setting up a committee to probe unaccounted Covid-19 deaths in Chennai. The Directorate of Public Health (DPH) and Preventive Medicine found that the death registry maintained by the Greater Chennai Corporation recorded 236 deaths that were not added to the state’s tally.

DPH has now formed a nine-member committee to reconcile Covid-19 related deaths for Chennai. “We are yet to see the data from the corporation which will help us get to the bottom of the problem,” says Dr P Vadivelan who is heading the committee which will soon discuss the matter with officials of corporation, public health and Directorate of Medical Education. “We suspect that many of these deaths happened at home so they may have received tests late and reported late.”

Tamil Nadu chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami told reporters on Thursday: “We don’t hide the number of deaths, we won’t gain anything if we do that.”

Newspapers on Thursday reported that some Covid deaths are not reflecting in the state tally as per the daily data released by DPH and department of the health and family welfare in Tamil Nadu. As of June 8, this bulletin reported that Chennai accounted for 224 out of the 286 deaths in Tamil Nadu. When DPH officials found an additional 236 more deaths in Chennai’s city corporation, a revision exercise was ordered to reconcile the data.

“We are conducting an analysis of our line list of all the positive patients in the state which should give us a clear picture,” says Greater Chennai Corporation commissioner G Prakash. Director of Public Health Dr TS Selvavinayagam has asked the civic body to share data from March and for all deaths to be reported on a daily basis. “Reconciliation is an approved administrative mechanism. The aim is to rectify the registry by understanding why, when and how the numbers are reported as two-three departments are involved,” says Selvavinayagam. A senior official of the corporation said on condition of anonymity that “ the audit can go through these cases and if it is due to Covid-19, there is no shame in adding those figures.”

On the same day that the mismatch came to light, a Chennai-based anti-corruption group, Arappor Iyakkam, sent a report to health secretary Beela Rajesh challenging underreporting of Covid-19 death cases. It released two mortuary cards from the Government Stanley Medical College Hospital in Chennai that were marked ‘Covid-19 positive’ and complained the cases did not reflect in the state tally.

“Whistleblowers have been sending us such cases to be exposed,” said Jayaram Venkatesan, founder, Arappor Iyakkam. “The argument that there is miscommunication falls flat because we have exposed cases in government hospitals which also needs to be investigated.”

Officials say that hospitals must inform both the corporation and DPH of Covid-19 deaths but only few are reporting to the corporation (via local authorities such as sanitary inspectors and zonal officers) which, in turn, has not updated the DPH. “In other districts in Tamil Nadu, we have a deputy director of health service who coordinates at the block or municipality level and reports to the DPH. That mechanism is missing in Chennai,” said a former health official who asked not to be named.

The state health department said 1,875 persons tested positive, while 22 succumbed to the virus. The capital Chennai recorded more than 1,400 cases.