MADURAI: Responding to DMK President M K Stalin’s allegations against State Government that it hides the actual Covid death toll, Revenue Minister RB Udhayakumar, on Friday, said protocols laid down by the World Health Organisation (WHO) were being followed in declaring Covid deaths.
Stalin, on Thursday, alleged that Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami and Health Minister C Vijaya Baskar were hiding Covid death toll for political mileage. He demanded that the chief minister apologise to the public.
Addressing the media persons in this regard, Udhayakumar said: “There were confusions initially in adding the death of 444 patients to the Covid death toll since the cause of deaths were underlying comorbid conditions. As per WHO, Covid patients who died of any comorbid condition should be included in Covid death toll. We did the same.
The discussions delayed the announcement, but the facts were never hidden.” He said Tamil Nadu ranks first among other States in testing samples for Coronavirus-infection. Of the 1.86+ lakh patients identified with Covid, over 1.36 lakh patients have been cured even before the discovery of a vaccine. Having understood the “pulse of people”, CM has cancelled the semester exams, he said.
“Attracting investments worth `30,664 crore in the past four months, Tamil Nadu has become a destination for fresh investments. The investments will give jobs for 67,222 youth,” he added. Taking a dig at Stalin, he said, “Unable to bear the appreciations being received by the AIADMK government for its performance, Stalin has been levelling allegations against the government.” “DMK is the only party in the country whose government was dismissed for falsifying accounts. Stalin is just giving voice for the scripts of I-PAC (Prashant Kishor),” he charged.