Maharashtra Updates Covid Numbers With Delayed Data To 1.08 Lakh Deaths

Over the past few days, Maharashtra has been revising its Covid death numbers to reflect data that came in with some lapse of time. This exercise over the past 12 days has resulted in the state's overall pandemic-related mortality zooming by over 8,800 to 1.08 lakh now.  

This massive data reconciliation exercise since June 1 has seen deaths being reported with a delay from Pune, Thane, Nagpur, Nashik, Aurangabad, Ahmednagar, and Yavatmal. Of these, the first three alone reported 1,368, 1,167, and 503 updates, a government statement said.

Overall, the highest single-day highest reconciled data was on Friday at 2,213, according to the statement.

On Sunday, the state recorded 483 COVID-19 deaths. Of these, 284 occurred in the past 48 hours and 199 in the past week. As the deaths from before that period were also updated on the state's Covid portal today, there is an increase of 2,288 deaths in the state's progressive death tally, according to a statement from the government.

The Maharashtra government has, for a while, been adding the previous week's data in almost every state health bulletin. However, following criticism from the opposition, the state decided to reconcile the missing data.

Now, at every midnight, the death list is downloaded from the analytics portal of the state- and district-level duplicate entries are removed. The list is then sent out to local authorities for verification. The final list sent out by 5 pm.

Such reconciliation is done every fortnight, the government release said.

District-level hospitals don't update real-time info. A shortage of manpower due to the overwhelming number of cases in April and May and the focus on oxygen and bed management during the second wave are the two reasons for this delay.

"While a city like Mumbai may have a system in place, many districts, especially the smaller ones, lack the manpower and expertise to do so," officials said.