Central team seeks interaction with Bengal's COVID-19 death audit committee

The central team visiting Kolkata to assess the COVID-19 situation wrote to the West Bengal government on Friday, seeking a detailed report regarding the functioning of the coronavirus death audit committee and a meeting with its members.

In a letter to Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha, the team, led by senior bureaucrat Apurba Chandra, sought to know the system of approving the declaration of death of COVID-19 patients by the committee of doctors, which was set up by the state government.

"The principal health secretary on April 23 gave some reasons for the establishment of the committee of doctors and also mentioned that if a COVID patient dies in a road accident, he cannot be said to have died of COVID," Chandra said in his letter to Sinha.

"The IMCT did not find the reason convincing as there is no comparison between a road death and a death in a hospital due to disease," he said.

The team sought the case records of all the COVID-19 patients, where the cause of death is attributed to some other cause by the committee.

"We would like to know whether such a committee is in line with ICMR guidelines or medical practice," Chandra added.