"Absolutely Wrong": Kerala Denies Centre's Charge On Daily Covid Data

Kerala's Health Minister today said that Kerala has been sending data to the Central government on a daily basis.

Kerala's Health Minister Veena George has denied the Centre's allegations over daily Covid data, calling them "unfortunate" and "absolutely wrong". Centre yesterday wrote to Kerala government asking it to provide Covid data daily and said that the southern state reporting this data after a gap of 5 days had impacted and skewed main Covid indicators like the number of cases and positivity rate. The Centre had said that daily cases saw a jump of 90% because of the Kerala government's delay in sending data. 

Kerala's Health Minister today said that the state has been sending data to the Central government on a daily basis, the only change has been that the state government has stopped publishing daily bulletins in the state.

Daily and diligent reporting of data is critical to arriving at a meaningful understanding of the pandemic situation and will help not only in tracking and monitoring but also in defining the strategies and plans at the Centre, state and district levels, Joint Secretary in the Union Health Ministry Lav Agarwal had said in a letter to Kerala's Principal Secretary of Health Rajan N Khobragade.

"It has been observed that Kerala has reported its state-level COVID-19 data after a gap of five days (since April 13). This has impacted and skewed the status of India's key monitoring indicators like cases, deaths and positivity. India has reported a 90 per cent increase in new cases and 165 per cent increase in positivity in a single day," Mr Agarwal had said.