KOLKATA: Amid the raging controversy over alleged mishandling of the COVID-19 situation and "hiding of figures" by the Trinamool Congress administration in West Bengal, discrepancies have been noticed in the novel coronavirus figures presented by the health authorities of the state and the Union governments.
As per the latest bulletin by the health department on Saturday, the state has reported 1,786 COVID-19 cases and 171 deaths of people infected with the virus.
However, the authorities have attributed only 99 fatalities to the contagion and the rest to comorbidities where coronavirus was incidental.
The Union ministry of health and family welfare website, on the other hand, put the death toll at 160 and the number of cases is 1,678.
Earlier, the number of COVID-19 cases presented by the union health ministry was higher than that of the state government.
But since the last four days, the cycle has reversed, and now the number of cases reported by the state is on the higher side.
The union health ministry website also mentioned, for the first time on May 5, that 70 percent of the deaths are due to comorbidity conditions.
Asked about the discrepancies in figures by the West Bengal and the central governments, a health department official said the state is providing all the data to the union health ministry on a regular basis.
"We are sharing all the data with the Centre. What they are posting on the website is up to them. We cannot comment on it," the official said.
The Centre recently rapped the state government over its COVID-19 management which, it said, was characterised by a very low rate of testing in proportion to the population, and the highest mortality rate in the country, 13.2 percent.
The state government, however, said less number of active cases was detected in the initial days due to lack of infrastructure, and this resulted in an apparently high rate of deaths in the state.