BENGALURU: With the huge increase in the number of deaths related to Covid-19 in smaller towns and villages, the State Government has decided to conduct a death audit on a daily basis in each district with the help of an expert committee.
The decision was taken at a recent meeting of the Chief Minister with district Deputy Commissioners and members of the Technical Advisory Committee on Covid-19.
“Auditing the deaths on a daily basis will help in understanding why they occurred and the report will be used to fill the gaps and prevent future deaths of Covid 19.
The report will also be submitted to the state,” an order from the Chief Secretary to the DCs said. Meanwhile, experts from TAC say that there has been a delay in patients reporting to hospitals, which seems to be the main reason for the increase in the number of deaths and also the surge as it is being seen that patients are not getting tested and isolating themselves on the onset of symptoms.
“We have noticed that there has been a delay in reporting to hospitals. Also, it is important to understand if a patient’s death was also due to nonavailability of ICU care, oxygen beds, etc. This is important for the state to prepare for the third wave,” said Dr C N Manjunath, Director, Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Research and member of the TAC.
Districts have to provide list of unused ventilators
Meanwhile, Dr S Sachidanand, vice-chancellor of Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, who is heading the State Death Audit Committee, said daily analysis will help the officials pinpoint where they are going wrong and why it is important for patients to report symptoms early.
If the majority of deaths are due to nonavailability of hospital beds or ICU care, then the State Government will know which districts need more attention in terms of infrastructure - both human resources and medical equipment - an official explained.
Meanwhile, the state has also decided that each district has to provide a list of unused ventilators so that they can be given to bigger hospitals and also to private hospitals which have an MoU with the government. The government had recently come in for flak for reducing testing numbers.
To ensure early detection, the state will now conduct door-to-door surveillance by booth/ ward/village task force teams with the help of field level health care workers and NGOs present in the respective area and test all the symptomatic patients with Rapid Antigen Test kits. They will also immediately isolate such persons and test their family members and high-risk contacts to prevent the spread.