The Indian state of Bihar on Thursday increased its COVID-19 death toll after the discovery of thousands of unreported cases, raising concerns that many more fatalities were not officially recorded.
The Bihar Health Department revised its COVID-19 fatality count to more than 9,429 from 5,424 — a jump of more than 70 percent.
Health officials in one of India’s poorest states said that the 3,951 unreported fatalities had occurred last month.
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The revised numbers reflect “deaths reported at private hospitals, in transit to health facilities, under home isolation and those dying of post COVID-19 complications,” the health officials said.
International health experts say that many COVID-19 fatalities remain unrecorded in India, more so during a surge in April and last month, when hospitals ran unbearably full and oxygen supplies were low. Officials at federal agencies from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have dismissed reports of undercounting as exaggerated and misleading.
States like Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have also recalibrated the numbers of deaths for the disease.
Overall, India’s cases and deaths have over the past few weeks fallen steadily.
The 91,702 cases added within 24 hours yesterday pushed India’s total to more than 29.3 million, second only to the US.
The Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare also reported 3,403 fatalities within 24 hours, raising the overall death toll to 363,079.
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