Odisha Covid death audits to be expedited: Health department

BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha government has asked a committee doing death audit of Covid patients to expedite the process to early assess the virus death toll correctly amid reports that the deaths may be underreported.
Additional chief secretary (health) Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra said because of pendency in audit of deaths, the figures reported so far may be less than the actual deaths. “Each death of Covid patient is reported to a committee led by the director medial education and training (DMET). The committee audits them and find out which patient died of Covid,” Mohapatra told TOI.
“The pendency is because of the workload. So actual number of deaths may be more,” he said.
Mohapatra said district administrations have also been asked to expedite sending the death summaries to the committee so that the audits are done faster, he said. Apart from DMET, director health and director public health are other members of the committee.
The low death count has baffled many amid rising load on cremation grounds and expansions of crematoriums in many parts of the state. A statement issued by Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation on May 14 had noted rising number of bodies and pressure on Satya Nagar crematorium in city.
Odisha on Thursday reported 25 Covid deaths, taking the officially confirmed death toll to 2403. While the positive cases in second wave is now almost equal to that in first, the number of official death count is less than one-third this time.
The state on Thursday reported 11,498 new infections taking total virus case load in the state to 6,55,899. The total positive cases reported this year (from January 1) at 3,26,033 has come close to the number reported last year of 3,29,866. However, the official death figures this time remain an incredibly less than one-third of the deaths reported last year.
Government figures said 1929 Covid patients (0.58%) died last year: 1876 died of Covid and 53 Covid patients died due to other reasons. This year, however, only 527 have died of Covid (there is no death of Covid patients reported due to other reasons) registering a death rate of 0.16%.
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