Pointing out that the administration in COVID-19 hotspot, Indore, is delaying the announcement of deaths due to COVID-19, by 20 days to 2 months, an RTI activist has demanded death audit for all COVID-19 mortalities in the district and also to make public, details of all deaths immediately.
Activist Ajay Dubey has sent a detailed complaint regarding ‘mismanagement’ and ‘illegal actions’ of the Indore administration led by District Collector Manish Singh to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking action on various counts.
Speaking to THE WEEK, Dubey said that a look at the details of 250-odd deaths in Indore suggests that several deaths that happened in April were reported in May and June, and are being reported even now. He has alleged that the delay in announcing initial deaths was to avoid reporting high numbers of deaths when Indore was in focus.
Dubey alleged that the lack of transparency in death figures were among the various discrepancies and errors in the management of COVID-19 situation in Indore under Singh.
Indore was among the districts with the highest mortality rates in the country during April (second highest after Pune in Maharashtra) and even half-way through May. Even now, with 258 deaths and 5,087 positive cases (as on Friday), the mortality rate in Indore is at 5 per cent, way higher than the state average of around 4 per cent and the national average of 2.7 per cent.
THE WEEK also noticed that from July 5 onward, the Indore health department has added two columns in its daily COVID-19 bulletins, giving a number of deaths on the particular day and a figure of ‘reconciliation’ deaths, often from the month of April.
Dubey alleged that this additional information was added by the district administration only after he pointed out the delay in reporting of deaths. He said that since the principal secretary of health department Faiz Ahmed Kidwai had earlier conceded issues with management and delay in referring patients as the cause of high mortality rate in Indore.
The activist has also alleged that the Indore administration has put the data of citizens at grave risk and also engaged in financial irregularity by using an app developed specifically for the district by a private agency for COVID-19-related survey of about 14 lakh Indore citizens.
Dubey has asked the logic of getting a specific app developed without seeking permission from the Union government despite availability of the Aarogya Setu app of the Government of India and Sarthak app of the Government of Madhya Pradesh for the same purpose. A specific complaint in this regard has been made to the director general (cyber cell) of the MP Police.
In his complaint sent to PM Modi, Dubey also pointed out other alleged irregularities by district collector Singh including permission for trade and transport of tobacco products in and outside the district on May 20, when strict lockdown was in place, issuing order of sending COVID-19 suspect accused of attack on doctors to jails of other districts that led to the spread of infection there, issuing and then retracting permission to the Patanjali Foundation for trial of ayurvedic medicine on COVID-19 patients and so on.
Despite repeated calls and a text message by THE WEEK, Singh did not respond.
On the issue of delayed divulging of deaths, the district chief medical and health officer (CMHO), Dr Praveen Jadia, said that initially the samples of the patients were sent out of Indore for testing and there was huge delay in getting reports. Sometimes reports came in long after death. Keeping this in mind, recently an audit of all the COVID-19 cases was done and hospitals were asked to give the detailed outcome of each case.
“We then noticed that there were unreported deaths from initial weeks, so we have now started giving out those figures under the reconciliation column,” Jadia said.
