The Kerala Opposition has alleged underreporting of Covid deaths and warned the state government that any misrepresentation of facts would lead to denial of compensation to the families of the dead.

Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan on Friday accused the state government of flouting the Indian Council of Medical Research guidelines on the reporting of Covid deaths.

Kerala’s official case fatality rate is 0.45 per cent, far below the national CFR of 1.1 per cent.

“The ICMR guidelines state that the death of a person who either tested positive for Covid, (whether or not they had) co-morbid conditions... or was medically suspected to have contracted the virus must be treated as a Covid death,” the Congress leader said on Friday. “But that is not happening in Kerala.”

However, the ICMR guidelines are meant for doctors and state when the cause of death should be labelled as confirmed Covid and when as suspected/probable Covid. Governments everywhere declare the Covid death toll only on the basis of confirmed Covid cases (positive tests).

“A cover-up of fatalities would end up denying compensation to the kin of the dead,” Satheeshan said, urging the government to rectify the numbers by collating data from hospitals, crematoriums and graveyards within 10 days.

The Supreme Court has directed that ex gratia assistance must be provided to families who have lost members to Covid.

The Institute for Health Metric and Evaluation at the University of Washington had in June published a report saying more than 25,000 people would have died of Covid in Kerala although the official number was less than half of that.

As of Thursday, the state had recorded a total of 13,359 Covid deaths against 2,937,033 total infections and 1.02 lakh active cases.

Satheeshan urged the government to depend entirely on the report of a doctor who had treated a patient at least 24 hours before the death.

“Instead, an expert committee sitting in Thiruvananthapuram is deciding who died of Covid. This should end immediately,” he said.

“The Congress is ready to undertake the job of finding the real numbers if the government is unwilling to rectify the mistakes.”

Health minister Veena George admitted possible lapses and said the department would take corrective action. “It’s possible that some Covid deaths have not been recorded, but that is not deliberate,” she told a news conference.

“Covid fatalities are recorded by either the doctor who treated the patient or the medical superintendent of the hospital. We launched an online registration facility last month and mandated all hospitals to record Covid deaths within 24 hours.”

Kerala had nearly flattened the curve of Covid infections during the first wave in May last year, earning global praise for its health department, then headed by K.K. Shailaja. Since then the state has struggled to keep the numbers low although its CFR has remained among the lowest in the world.

The foreign media and sections of the domestic media have accused the central and state governments of underreporting Covid deaths, with The New York Times in May suggesting the actual toll could be five to 13 times the official count.