To identify deaths that can be attributed only to COVID-19 and the underlying cause in deaths where COVID-19 findings were incidental, the State has begun a comprehensive audit of deaths that happened during the third wave. Of the total 645 deaths that were reported in January, the audit of 596 deaths has been completed.
State Health Commissioner D. Randeep said all the districts and BBMP areas had been asked to audit the 645 deaths reported from January 1 till January 31. “So far, we have received 596 death audit reports and 49 are pending. The most common aspect noted is that a majority of the deaths happened within two days of reporting to hospitals. The deaths that happened in February are yet to be taken up for analysis,” he said.
Audit team
He said once all the districts submitted their reports, a State-level death audit team will compile and summarise the same to chalk out early intervention strategies. “I have submitted a proposal to the government seeking the constitution of the State-level death audit team comprising doctors and officials from the department,” he said.
Earlier, an analysis of 373 deaths reported till mid-January by the Health Department had found that 206 (55.3%) happened within two days of reporting to hospitals. While 92 deaths happened in two to five days of reporting, 45 happened beyond five days of reporting. The remaining 30 were of those who died at home, during transit or were brought dead.
The Commissioner said a similar pattern was being observed in the overall deaths. “We have noticed that a majority of the deaths in the third wave could have been prevented if patients had reported early. Also, over 80% of the deaths in the third wave are among those with comorbidities,” he noted.
Pointing out that these people would have ignored symptoms at home for long and would have rushed to hospitals only when symptoms aggravated, the Commissioner said: “The pattern of deaths in the second wave was different from the third. We had seen people developing breathlessness and succumbing to the disease on the seventh or eighth day during the second wave.”
K.V. Trilok Chandra, BBMP Special Commissioner (Health), said the death audit is to understand the epidemiological as well as clinical perspective of the deaths. “We are hoping to submit our report in a day or two,” he said.
“We have examined if deprivation of timely treatment owing to delay in admission of patients to the hospitals or delayed referral from a smaller hospital to a bigger facility could have caused the death. Clinically, we also analysed the vaccination status and comorbidities of the deceased to learn the underlying causes,” he said.
C.N. Manjunath, nodal officer for labs and testing in the State’s COVID-19 task force and member of the State’s Clinical Experts Committee, said, “If someone has suffered a massive heart attack or a brain haemorrhage or has undergone a major surgery and if he is incidentally COVID-19 positive, you cannot brand it as a COVID-19 death.”
Unlike second wave
“In the second wave, ICU admissions were high and a majority of patients were on ventilators as lung involvement was dominant. Most were on high flow oxygen and obviously COVID-19 was the cause. In the third wave, most had mild symptoms and lung involvement was negligible. Hence, it is worthwhile to know the exact cause of deaths,” he added.
