Kerala faces Centre's ire for updating COVID-19 data after five days, skewing India’s coronavirus numbers

Representative image (REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui)

The Union health ministry has come down heavily on Kerala for reporting COVID-19-related data on April 18 after a gap of five days.

Owing to a backlog by the southern state which reported 940 cases on Monday, the country registered 2,183 COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours. The state also reported 213 coronavirus deaths which included backlog deaths.

“This has impacted and skewed the status of India’s key monitoring indicators like cases, deaths and positivity,” said a letter by Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the ministry to Rajan N Khobragade, principal secretary (health), Kerala on Monday.

India has reported a 90 percent jump in new cases and 165 percent increase in positivity in a single day, said the letter shot by Agarwal.

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The Centre, according to the ministry, has regularly emphasised the need for a robust reporting mechanism for monitoring state-wise cases and deaths on daily basis.

“Since the start of the pandemic, the government has been receiving relevant data daily which has helped in proactive analysis and strategy building at the national level,” said the letter.

Daily and diligent reporting of data is critical to arrive at a meaningful understanding of the pandemic at the district, state and national levels and ensure that any anomalies, surge or emerging trends can be captured in a timely manner, wrote Agarwal.

This is especially relevant, according to the letter, as COVID-19 is a highly infectious disease and also has an associated risk of emergence of new variants.

The government also underlined that quick and continuous update of data will assist in India’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and will help not only in tracking and monitoring but will also help in defining the strategies and plans at the Central, state and district levels.

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The nudge to Kerala comes at a time when at least three states in India- Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh- are showing signs of rising daily new infections and test positivity rates.