Aam Aadmi Party has demanded a judicial enquiry into the shocking incident in which 67 covid deaths went unreported. State Convenor Rahul Mhambre held the Health Minister Vishwajit Rane directly responsible for this fiasco, and demanded his resignation pending the judicial enquiry.
Addressing media at the party office in Panaji today, Mhambre charged that the Govt tried to conceal this data for months until it was no longer possible, and finally tried to get away with it by mentioning only a couple of sentences in extremely fine print at the bottom of the daily report.
“The BJP Govt has a bad habit of hiding its failures. Whether scarcity of beds, or shortage of oxygen, or the confusion over vaccines, we have seen this Govt try to brush things under the carpet. CM Sawant resorts to making empty announcements in order to generate positive headlines, instead of actually solving the problems unless ordered by the High Court. Any other Govt would have at least held a press conference to inform the people on such a major lapse, but we didn’t even see a tweet from the CM or the HM on this grave issue”, Mhambre said.
Mhambre stated that ICMR guidelines very clearly specify the criteria and the procedure and the time limit for declaring a death as covid death. Mhambre said a white paper needs to be released within 24 hours on how and why these guidelines were allowed to be flouted.
“Every person that is tested positive enters the reporting system, and has to be accounted for on a daily basis as either “active case”, “recovered”, or “covid death”. Were these 67 victims counted as “recovered” even though they were dead? Govt has promised action against the hospitals, but what about action against the officials and minister responsible for maintaining this tally?” Mhambre questioned.
Mhambre said the unreported deaths are a major issue of concern, as the data of covid deaths is used for a lot of decision-making by ICMR at the national level and even WHO at the international level. Mhambre cautioned that it is important for every covid death and its medical details to be reportedly correctly, as even the treatment protocol for covid patients and subsequent changes to it are based on such data and medical history.
Wondering whether this was just the tip of the iceberg, Mhambre said further independent enquiry is required to establish whether possibly more deaths may have gone unreported in both private and Govt hospitals. Mhambre said this latest incident has completely eroded the trust in the administration, and concluded that the Health Minister and health officials have no moral right to continue in their positions.
