{"id":86484,"date":"2020-05-02T20:44:21","date_gmt":"2020-05-02T15:14:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/?p=86484"},"modified":"2020-08-28T13:04:10","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T07:34:10","slug":"west-bengals-handling-corona-cases-scanner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/india-news\/west-bengals-handling-corona-cases-scanner\/","title":{"rendered":"West Bengal\u2019s handling of corona cases under scanner."},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">West Bengal\u2019s mishandling of the <strong>Covid-19\u00a0outbreak<\/strong> is plunging alarming depths. A <strong>state government<\/strong> appointed <strong>Death Audit Committee (DAC)<\/strong> reports\u00a033\u00a0<strong>Covid-19\u00a0deaths<\/strong> as of April\u00a030, while it acknowledges that the number of dead who<strong> tested positive<\/strong> for <strong>Covid-19<\/strong>\u00a0is\u00a0105.\u00a0It insists only\u00a033\u00a0deaths are attributable to Covid-19, while the other deaths are because of <strong>co-morbidities<\/strong>. Against a total of\u00a0744\u00a0cases as on April\u00a030, the death rate is\u00a04.4%\u00a0if the \u201833\u00a0deaths\u2019 version is considered; this is higher than the national death rate of\u00a03.2%, but not as drastically as the death rate of\u00a014.1%\u00a0if the number of deaths is taken to be\u00a0105.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Such classification of the deaths is quite irregular\u2014no other state in the country is discounting Covid-19-positive fatalities for pre-existing medical conditions. Given the risk of death in <strong>Covid-19\u00a0cases<\/strong> increases with co-morbidities, most jurisdictions around the world have been classifying such deaths as <strong>Covid-19\u00a0deaths<\/strong>. More important, with studies showing that Covid-19\u00a0pathogen attacks the body at multiple sites and in multiple ways, it is not clear how the state is making the distinction in attribution of death. Indeed, the central team tasked with monitoring the state\u2019s response had asked the DAC to explain the methodology.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Meanwhile, the DAC has advised the state health department officials to \u201ckeep more records of patients and improve the procedure of keeping records\u201d. It has also pushed for a uniform format to issue death certificates, detailing immediate cause of death, antecedent cause of death and underlying cause of death, the standard protocol for medical reporting of death. That the committee should have to even reiterate a standard protocol shows how procedural lapses could also be masking the state\u2019s true Covid-19\u00a0burden.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Add to this the fact that the state has not been able to strictly enforce the <strong>national lockdown<\/strong>, policemen trying to enforce the lockdown in a red zone in Howrah were assaulted and pelted with stones, while there have been reports of community events going on in some places in a business-as-usual mode. With substantial cases coming up every day, its high time the state government must get its act together, otherwise the situation will go out of hand.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>West Bengal\u2019s mishandling of the Covid-19 outbreak is plunging alarming depths. A state government appointed Death Audit Committee (DAC) reports 33 Covid-19 deaths as of April 30, while it acknowledges that the number of dead who tested positive for Covid-19 is 105.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":86489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1497],"tags":[96043,96049,92435,60875,96048,83498,266],"yst_prominent_words":[],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2020\/05\/02204241\/WB.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86484"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86484"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=86484"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=86484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- html is corrupted -->