Survey data delinked from vaccine list - Health department officials question findings of comorbidity count in city

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Sanjay Mandal   |   TT   |   Calcutta   |   20.01.21  : The data from a survey in the city to identify people with comorbidities is not good enough and will not be used to prepare a list of people who will get Covid-19 jabs on a priority basis, sources said on Tuesday.

The survey was conducted by the Calcutta Municipal Corporation from September 7 to 30 and data of more than seven lakh households in the city have been uploaded. The data was to be used to monitor people with comorbidities so that timely treatment could be arranged if they contracted Covid and to make a list of those who would need vaccines on a priority basis.

“The data from the comorbidity survey will not be used to prepare the list of people. It could be used for other purposes,” a health department official said on Tuesday.

Health department sources said the quality of the data was not good enough to be used to prepare the list of people with comorbidities who should be in priority groups for a Covid vaccine.

CMC officials, however, denied the data was not up to the mark.

“There were flaws in the collection of data at the ground level and also in data uploading. Sample checks have revealed that in many cases names, addresses and contact numbers of the respondents did not match. The quality of the data was far from desirable,” said a state government official involved in Bengal’s Covid response.

Several residents across Calcutta told Metro that CMC workers had not visited their homes to collect data about co-morbidities.

The CMC was helped by the state health department and Covid Care Network, an organisation of doctors, health officials and Covid survivors, in conducting the survey. The health department and the network provided technical knowhow, while CMC workers and officials collected and uploaded the data.

The exercise was undertaken because people with comorbidities — such as hypertension, diabetes, cardiac diseases, chronic kidney disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — are more vulnerable to the novel coronavirus.

Health department data reveals that 83.9 per cent of the people in Bengal who died after contracting Covid had comorbidities. Till Tuesday, the Covid death toll in the state stood at 10,074.

The government had planned to use the data from the survey to monitor these people. If any person with comorbidities had Covid, the health department and the CMC would monitor his or her condition closely and arrange for prompt hospitalisation, if needed.

In the initial days, many people with comorbidities had turned critical because they got admitted to hospital late. 

Around six lakh health workers will get Covid vaccine jabs in the state in the ongoing first phase of vaccination. Health department officials said frontline workers such as cops and civic workers would be vaccinated in the second phase, to be followed by people above 50 or those below 50 but suffering from co-mor-bidities.

State government officials said the schedule of subsequent rounds of vaccination would depend on availability of doses from the Centre.

“We will have to prepare a guideline to identify people with comorbidities. It will be done soon,” said a senior official of the health department.    

The department had received the comorbidity data from the CMC a few weeks back, following which officials started an analysis.

The CMC had first decided to upload the entire set of data by Durga Puja last year. The deadline was later extended to October 31, but even that was missed. The data was finally uploaded towards the end of November, after which the analysis started.

The survey’s initial target was to cover 10 lakh households in Calcutta but that could not be achieved. At several stages, CMC employees had expressed their reluctance to continue with the exercise, sources said.

CMC officials denied that the quality of data was not good.

“We held several meetings with the health department and Covid Care Network. The process and format of data uploading was prepared by the health department. We implemented it and to the best of our capacity,” said an official of the civic body.  

“There are lakhs and lakhs of names and addresses. In such a huge exercise, there could be a few lapses but the health department has not told us that the quality of data is not good,” he said.

According to the official, in many cases reluctance of residents in providing data proved to be a hindrance. He said there was a possibility that some people did not want to reveal contact numbers or other details.