Bihar adds ‘backlog’ of 2,424 Covid deaths

The Bihar government on Friday revised its Covid-19 death toll, adding a “backlog” of 2,424 deaths that had earlier gone unaccounted for.

For the second time in less than six months, the Bihar government on Friday revised its Covid-19 death toll, adding a “backlog” of 2,424 deaths that had earlier gone unaccounted for, putting the total number of fatalities caused by the pandemic at 12,089 – up from under 10,000.

Several other states such as Maharashtra, Kerala, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, have all issued such statistical corrections in recent months to incorporate previously uncounted fatalities in their Covid-19 tolls.(Reuters file photo. Representative image)

While the figures released by the state’s health department stood at 9,664 on December 2, the number rose by 2,425 on December 3. One of these deaths occurred on December 3, as per the health bulletin.

During a similar exercise on June 9, the state government had added 3,931 to the then reported 5,424 fatalities – an increase by 73%. The audit was part of a 20-day exercise conducted on orders of the Patna high court which flagged irregularities in the fatalities in Buxar district on May 17.

The fresh figures were added to the toll after verification of applications, for compensation of ₹4 lakh to kin of those who succumbed to the virus, which were received in the past one-and-half-years, Bihar health minister Mangal Pandey said.

“These deaths remained unaccounted earlier. The applications seeking claims of ₹4 lakh as being provided by Bihar government were pending for a long time in the districts and after verification of papers, the fresh figures were uploaded on the website,” the minister said on Saturday.

“There is nothing to hide. Chief minister Nitish Kumar had announced to provide a compensation of ₹4 lakh to kin of each person who died of Covid, on production of proper papers. These additional death figures are nothing but only those whose papers were found to be correct,” he added.

Of the 2,425 deaths added to the tally on Friday (which included a single death that occurred on Friday), the maximum increase in figures was reported in Patna (445), followed by Vaishali (210), Katihar (174), Gopalganj (162) and Jehananbad (135).

The revised data reflects the deaths reported across private hospitals, in transit to health facilities, under home isolation and those dying of post-Covid complications, a health department official said on condition of anonymity.

Several other states such as Maharashtra, Kerala, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, have all issued such statistical corrections in recent months to incorporate previously uncounted fatalities in their Covid-19 death tolls. Such exercises have not only pushed up the country’s death count, but also implied that the fatalities reported during the peak of the outbreak in the country were grossly under-reported.

On August 21, an analysis of Civil Registration System (CRS) data in Bihar showed that there were at least 251,000 excess deaths registered in the state since the start of the Covid-19 outbreak (from March 2020 to May 2021), which is 48.6 times the official number of confirmed Covid deaths (5,163) in the state in the same time period. The figures in Bihar presented one of the largest deviations in excess mortality seen in such calculations of any state in the country so far.