Nationwide tally of COVID positive people, death toll may be much higher than official figures

As per official data, over 300,000 people in India are being infected by the coronavirus daily for the last several days. This is despite the low rate of testing being done in the country to detect the virus infected people. At several places, civic and government health officials are even refusing to carry out the test saying they do not have adequate number of testing kit.

It is estimated that the actual number of COVID patients in the country is at least ten times more than the official figure.

There is also a huge gap between the official figure of deaths from COVID-19 and the aggregate of dead bodies being cremated and buried in crematoriums and graveyards. The difference between the number of bodies disposed of in crematorium and graveyard and the official figure of COVID-19 deaths is estimated to be at least ten times more.

For instance, in Ahmedabad, the home town of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the official death toll on April 12 was given as 20 whereas a widely circulated Gujarati language newspaper ‘Sandesh’ reported that 64 deaths of COVID-19 patients had occurred in just one hospital on that day.

Similarly, according to a report in the national English daily, The Hindustan Times, the official number of people who died in Bhopal, the state capital of Madhya Pradesh, was 34 in a fortnight whereas crematoriums and graveyards of the city had performed the last rites of more than 800 people.

The Financial Times, which has collated reports from several states, too has brought out the vast gap between the official death toll and the dead bodies cremated or buried, pointing out that the difference in the numbers is very high particularly in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and to some extent in Bihar.

Regional newspapers have been reporting piling up of dead bodies outside crematoriums and burial grounds as there is a waiting period of 6 to 10 hours for a body to get cremated or buried.  In all major cities of Gujarat, new crematoriums have been opened by social organisations and government too to ease the pressure on the existing ones.

Despite the Prime Minister’s directive to speed up testing, tracing and treating coronavirus infected people, even testing has been sluggish all across the country.

Even the Gujarat High Court, which has taken up a PIL suo moto, has questioned the government’s data of coronavirus testing and reprimanded it for fudging the numbers with a stern warning to come out with factual figures.

In Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, even the staff of the primary health centres have urged the state government to supply more number of testing kits as they are unable to test more than 10 persons on a day.

Similar complaints have been reported from Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Bihar and Odisha.

As the number of infections and deaths has been spiralling as a result of the second wave of the pandemic, both government and private hospitals are witnessing a deluge of patients.

There has been an acute shortage of beds in hospitals. Long lines of ambulances carrying patients are seen outside hospitals, even as it is taking the ambulance service as long as ten to 12 hours to respond to an emergency call.

Social media platforms are flooded with SOS posts from friends and relatives of corona patients seeking admission in hospitals and oxygen for persons in critical conditions gasping for breath.

While the public health care system appears to have crumbled, good Samaritan individuals and philanthropic social organisations are offering medical grade Oxygen to the critically ill patients.

In contrast, the shortage of life-saving drugs has led to profiteering by unscrupulous persons who are selling anti-viral injection at a high premium price in the black market. Over two dozen organised gangs of black marketeers of medicines have been busted by the police in Gujarat in the past 15 days who had been operating in collusion with distributors of pharmaceuticals, medical stores and even some doctors.