Bihar's health department on Wednesday, 10 June, drastically revised the state's death toll and put the final number of fatalities due to COVID-19 at 9,429.
The state's health department added as many as 3,951 deaths in one day, after verification. Till the previous day, the total death toll for Bihar was at 5,500.
“We got to know from various sources that those who died (due to COVID) could be more in number. After consultations with stakeholders, the state government instructed the district administrations to identify institutional deaths due to COVID-19.”Bihar Health Minister Mangal Pandey, as quoted by ANI.
Pandey added, “For 15-20 days all DMs monitored cases and prepared a report with the combined number (of deaths). These are not two-day numbers. The report was prepared over 15-20 days. The government’s intent is to reach out to (COVID) deceased's families and help them financially.”
Though a breakup for 38 districts was provided, it was not mentioned when these additional deaths occurred.
As per the fresh figures, Patna district bore the brunt of the outbreak, accounting for a total of 2,303 deaths, followed by Begusarai (316), Muzaffarpur (314) East Champaran (391), and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's native district Nalanda (222).
Patna suffered the most during the pandemic.
The health department also revised the number of recovered persons from 7,01,234 on the previous day to 6,98,397.
The recovery rate, which was 98.7 per cent on the previous day, also dipped to 97.65 per cent following the revision in statistics.
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