U’khand issued 5.3k more death certificates than last yr between Jan and Apr: RTI

Dehradun: The Uttarakhand government issued a total of 23,324 death certificates between January and April this year, which was 5,343 more than the corresponding period last year, an RTI reply by the state health services department has revealed

Dehradun: The Uttarakhand government issued a total of 23,324 death certificates between January and April this year, which was 5,343 more than the corresponding period last year, an RTI reply by the state health services department has revealed. Following this, opposition parties as well as social activists have accused the state government of covering up the true extent of the impact of Covid-19 in the state.

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The state saw 960 Covid-19 deaths from Feb 2 to April 30 as no health bulletin was issued by state in January in the first four months of the year.

The right to information application was filed by the former state secretary of Samajwadi Party, Rakesh Barthwal, who had sought information about the death certificates issued in the state from April 2020 till June this year.

The state health services department provided data for the whole of 2020, but for 2021, it could only provide data for the first four months, saying that data after April was yet to come.

Of the 23,324 deaths, 13,807 were men and 9,517 women. In 2020, Uttarakhand had issued 62,219 death certificates of which 17,981 were issued from January to April. Of these, 10,520 were for men and 7,461 for women.

This January, 5,986 death certificates were issued, followed by 5,424 in February and 5,572 in March. In April, during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of death certificates issued rose to 6,342, which was 2,751 more than the April 2020 figure of 3,591.

The most number of death certificates this year were issued in Dehradun (5,659), followed by Haridwar (3,865) and US Nagar (3,337).

To be sure, death certificates issued in a period do not necessarily have to correspond with the deaths in the same period. And governments around the country have worked at registering all deaths, something that could explain an organic increase in deaths. Still, the fact that there were a possible 4,383 excess deaths (5343 less 960, the deaths from Covid-19 in the first four months of the year) has been picked up by some.

For instance, opposition Congress and social activists have questioned the authenticity of the number of Covid-19 deaths reported by the state government.

Congress state spokesperson Garima Dasauni attacked the BJP-led state government, saying, “There is definitely something fishy in the Covid-19 death figures reported by the government. It is not allowing the actual death figures to come out.”

She said that the death certificate numbers and the deaths due to Covid-19 don’t add up. “The number of death certificates issued and the total number of Covid-19 deaths reported have a huge difference. With the ongoing pandemic having its second wave peak in April, it is sure that most of the people whose deaths were registered had died of Covid-19. Then how come the reported Covid-19 deaths were so low?” Dasauni said.

Prominent social activist Anoop Nautiyal, who has been closely monitoring the pandemic situation in state since its outbreak last year, expressed concern that the true extent of the damage wrought by the pandemic in the state may never be known. “First, it was the backlog Covid-19 deaths not reported by hospitals, and now this. It seems the people of Uttarakhand will never be able to get actual data, which is sad because we as residents of the state deserve much better from our elected representatives,” said Nautiyal, the founder of Gati Foundation, an NGO that fights pollution in Uttarakhand.

The government has denied any connection between the death certificate numbers and Covid-19 deaths. “The death certificates are issued as per the rules and regulations on death of any person. It doesn’t mean that all died of Covid-19,” cabinet minister and government spokesperson Subodh Uniyal told the media on Tuesday.

The Uttarakhand government was caught on the wrong foot recently over alleged fake Covid-19 tests that were carried out in the state during the Mahakumbh in April.