The Madhya Pradesh government added 1,478 deaths as backlog to the official data of Covid-19 deaths released on Monday night.
According to the daily bulletin released by the health department, 762 backlog deaths were reported by private hospitals, and 508 by government hospitals in different districts, while 208 people died in home isolation.
Till now, 10,506 deaths have been reported from MP, where the death rate is 1.33%.
Medical education minister Vishwas Sarang said, “The deaths were reported late as health officials were focussing on providing treatment to infected people. With decrease in positivity rate in the state, the health officials conducted death audit and found backlog. It is nothing wrong that we focussed more on saving lives than counting deaths.”
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Opposition leaders and experts have been attacking the state government for hiding deaths due to Covid-19 in April and May and later adjusting the numbers in June.
“In June, the death rate increased to 8%. The crematorium and burial ground data, which showed higher number of deaths in April and May as compared to data shared by health department exposed the lie of the state government. In many districts, more than five deaths have been reported in a day but no cremation and burial was done as per Covid-19 protocol,” said SR Azad, a health activist.
Opposition leaders alleged the BJP-led state government wanted to hide data and that’s why they didn’t share break-up of deaths district-wise. “The state government wanted to hide that in Bhopal and Indore, people died in large numbers in the absence of oxygen beds and ventilators. Adding backlog of deaths has proved that they hid the data, but still there are many deaths which have not been added in the list. We will raise this issue in the monsoon session as we have real data,” said PC Sharma, a Congress MLA.
