Bodies of COVID-19 victims await cremation outside the Bans Ghat crematorium in Patna. Photo: PTI
New Delhi: The state of Bihar on Wednesday revised it COVID-19 death toll, putting the total number of fatalities caused by the pandemic at 9,429 – up from under 5,500.
According to the state health department, as many as 3,951 deaths have been added to the toll after verification. It did not specify when these additional deaths took place, though a breakup was provided for all 38 districts.
On Tuesday, the Bihar government announced it would be paying Rs 4 lakh ex gratia compensation to families of all those who died of COVID-19.
Going by the fresh figures, the number of lives lost in the second wave is close to 8,000 and a nearly six times increase in the death toll since April.
Patna district bore the brunt of the outbreak, accounting for a total of 2,303 deaths. Muzaffarpur was a distant second with 609 fatalities.
Patna also accounted for the highest number of 1,070 “additional deaths reported after verification”, followed by Begusarai (316), Muzaffarpur (314), East Champaran (391), and Chief Minister Nitish Kumars native Nalanda (222).
Altogether, 7,15,179 people have been infected in the state so far of whom more than five lakhs caught the contagion in the last couple of months.
The health department has also revised the number of recovered persons from 7,01,234 on the previous day to 6,98,397. The recovery rate, which was 98.70% on the previous day, has also come down to 97.65% following the revision in statistics.
The opposition in Bihar has been alleging that the government was fudging figures to hide its failure in handling the pandemic. The Wire had also reported how numbers put together by crematoriums and municipal corporations proved that the number of deaths in the state was far higher than being officially reported. In Patna, for instance, crematoriums saw 452.4% more COVID-19 deaths than previously officially reported between April 1 and May 20.
At present, there are 7,353 active coronavirus cases in the state.
(With PTI inputs)