Thiruvananthapuram: Despite the direction of the Supreme Court that deaths because Covid’s related complications must be certified as Covid-19 death, the state government holds that if there are non-inclusion of Covid deaths, they must complain.
Health Minister Veena George took the attitude that people who had complaints about not including death under Covid-19, could register complaints to Him via email.
However, the opposition tightens the minister’s statement, says how they can complain about death when there is no evidence available to prove their claims.
“The government must review all the deaths that occur during the pandemic and state the names of people who have died of Covid-19,” said opposition leader V D Sathean.
“The government is committed to ensuring transparency in reporting Covid death.
Everything has been determined based on the ICMR and WHO guidelines.
We are ready to research death if there are complaints.
The government has not received such a special complaint,” Veena said.
He stressed that it was not the committee, but each treating the doctor determined death.
To ensure more transparency, now determining Covid death has been carried out at the district level, he added.
However, the Minister was not ready to accept opposition requests to review all deaths during the pandemic and to publish the entire list of people who died of Covid-19.
Meanwhile, Sathean said the government misled the people by claiming that they followed the ICMR and WHO guidelines.
“This guideline clearly states that only death caused by accidents, suicide or other accidents must be considered as non-covid deaths even if the person is positive.
All other deaths, even because of comorbidity if the patient is positive, it must be considered a covid death,” he said.
“Here, what the government does is all deaths that have comorbidities are declared non-covid.
Also, the death caused by the patient becomes negative but dies because of a complication caused by Covid is also considered non-covid,” Satheani said.
He said because of these two reasons, many have not been included in the Covid government death list.
Now, the center has stated compensation for children who have become orphans after the death of their parents to Covid-19.
“In Kerala, many children deserve this compensation,” he added.
The State President of BJP K Surendran only said that a third of Covid’s death has been reported in the state, and the government has covered death so far.
Meanwhile, Veena said the names of those who surrendered to Covid-19 in the state would be stated from Saturday and so on.
He said specific instructions had been given to the department in this regard.
The health department was used to include the names of people who died because of Covid with their previous place but stopped later.
As of December last year, the names were published on the government website.
When the publishing name stopped, there was an accusation that it was an attempt to cover death.