Thousands of certified Covid deaths missing from Kerala's official count

As of June 30, 2021, Kerala's official Covid toll put out by the state health department has failed to include over 6,000 Covid-19 deaths that have been duly certified by doctors on the ground, pointing to a disturbing discrepancy between registered Covid deaths and declared Covid deaths.

Data obtained by TOI through RTI reveal that the state declared 13,235 Covid deaths till June 2021 as against19,584 Covid deaths actually registered by local bodies as per the office of the chief registrar (birth and death), showing a glaring mismatch of 6,349 deaths.
M Ramankutty, chief registrar (birth and death) said the cause of death is recorded as Covid-19 based on reports received from the medical officer concerned in the prescribed format.


The registration of deaths is done in two parts in local bodies; legal and statistical. The cause of death is recorded in the register for study and analytical purposes and the data on Covid death registrations have been compiled from this part through RTI.
The government has been maintaining that the Covid deaths are certified by a team of doctors according to ICMR and WHO guidelines but healthcare experts point out that medical officers who treated the deceased are better equipped to do that.

Though the state government has formally acknowledged the possibility of huge disparity between registered and declared deaths, it is waiting for formal individual complaints rather than squarely address the data anomaly.