Bhushan Gagrani explains reason behind Maha Covid-19 death toll jump

In a stunning development, the Covid-19 death toll in Maharashtra took a high jump by 1,328, after a detailed reconciliation of fatalities in Mumbai and other parts of the state in the past few weeks.

The development came a day after Leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis wrote to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray alleging fudging of figures of deaths by the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

Bhushan Gagrani, principal secretary, the Chief Minister’s Office, has blamed lack of information in private hospitals and poor record-keeping in government facilities. He also agreed that there was negligence to a certain extent at some level and it led to the mismatch in the figures. 

“Some private hospitals did not provide us the information in time while in some government hospitals, the records about the deaths were not kept properly. In some cases, the death certificates had the mention of Covid infection as the cause of the fatality, but in hospital records, the entry was missing. When we realised the lapses we, last week, asked all the municipal corporations and district collectors to reconcile the data on an urgent basis,” he added.