INDORE: The Covid death toll in Mandsaur jumped by 46 in Wednesday’s bulletin, two days after the government added 1,478 unreported deaths to the state figures.
The Mandsaur toll shot up by nearly 55% in a day to 130. Officials attributed this to an audit carried out by Ratlam Medical College, where several deaths were attributed to Covid after analysis. The significant rise in toll comes in the wake of allegations of under-reporting of deaths in the district.
Mandsaur CMHO Dr KL Rathore said, “The audit revealed deaths that were not recorded as Covid-19 casualties. These were added to rectify records.” The district health office had reported the rise from 84 deaths to 130 on Tuesday, which was noted in the Ujjain division bulletin a day later.
Ujjain division (health) director Dr Laxmi Baghel said, “The audit had cleared discrepancies. Apart from the new additions, there were some entries with the same names and addresses. All these backlogs of deaths have now been cleared.”
A few days ago, Congress leader Raghwendra Singh Tomar had alleged that Covid-19 figures were grossly underreported in the district. He said he had obtained figures from the civil surgeon’s office through RTI that as many as 3,076 people were admitted to the district hospital’s Covid ICU, isolation wards and other wards between March 1 and June 7, 2021 “During this period, 677 patients, who were undergoing treatment in Covid wards, died. In reply to the RTI, the civil surgeon’s office said that among those who died include probable/suspected/confirmed/others,” Tomar said.
As per the official figures released by the divisional health office on Wednesday, no fresh case was reported in Mandsaur.
