18 of 57 deaths caused by COVID-19 in West Bengal, says audit panel

A West Bengal government panel set up to ascertain the exact number of COVID-19 deaths in the state, has, after auditing 57 suspected COVID-19 deaths, certified that only 18 of them were caused "directly by the disease", Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha said on Friday.

The 39 other deaths were caused by severe co-morbidity conditions, he said referring to the audit committee report.

Three novel coronavirus patients have died in West Bengal in the past 24 hours, taking the death toll to 18 in the state, Sinha said.

"We got a report from the audit) committee that they have looked into 57 deaths. Out of it, they certified that 18 were directly caused by COVID19 while 39 others were because of severe co-morbid conditions which were the immediate cause of the deaths and COVID 19 was the incidental findings," Sinha said.

The committee constituted on April 3 audited deaths registered during the last 20 days and those allegedly because of COVID-19 before that date.

Among the co-morbidities of the 39 deaths, the audit committee mentioned cardiomyopathy with chronic kidney disease, renal failure, cerebral vascular accident, acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, left ventricular failure in severe hypertension, multi organ failure in type two diabetes and hypertension, red-cell aplasia in a case of severe diabetes and hypertension and severe diabetes with hypertension with hypo natremia.

The IAS officer said, "There are several reasons behind forming this audit committee. We wanted to know how many died because of COVID-19 or how many deaths the coronavirus has facilitated or whether a patient testing positive have died due to some other reasons."