Disparity in COVID-19 figures between Centre and state due to “complicated” reporting system, says Bengal chief secretary
West Bengal chief secretary Rajiva Sinha on Monday said that the reason for disparity between figures of Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) cases was because of a “highly complicated reporting system”. Sinha said this at a press conference at the state administrative headquarters Nabanna.
So far, the state has reported 1,259 COVID-19 cases with 61 new cases in the last 24 hours. Currently, there are 908 active cases in the state while 218 have been discharged. Also, 61 persons died. The last reported number of deaths was 33.
Sinha added that because of a “complicated system”, the cases which were reported after the daily bulletin was published “were not recorded anywhere”. However, he said that this was not intentional and the government has since made improvements in the system in two to three days and that is why the figures were not published for the last three days.
He added that the government was earlier not getting real time data from private hospitals. The figures provided by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is that of the number of cases tested and not of confirmed cases, he said. He added that in some cases a patient has to be tested “even three to four times” for ensuring that s/he has COVID-19. But the state publishes the number of only those patients who are confirmed COVID-19 cases. Hence, the observed difference, he explained.
The government also needed some time to find out the missing data and close the gap in figures published by the Centre and the state, he said explaining the absence of COVID-19 figures in the state bulletin for the last three days.
The recovery rate of COVID-19 at present in the state is 17.23 per cent, Sinha said. So far, 25,116 samples in the state have been tested for COVID-19 with 2,201 of them tested in the past 24 hours.
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