Maharashtra has been updating its COVID mortality figures in recent days to reflect data that was received after some lapse of time. Over the last 12 days, this activity has resulted in an increase of over 8,800 pandemic-related deaths in the state, bringing the total to 1.08 lakh.

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Since June 1, fatalities have been reported with a delay from Pune, Thane, Nagpur, Nashik, Aurangabad, Ahmednagar, and Yavatmal as part of a huge data reconciliation operation. According to a government statement, the first three cities alone reported 1,368, 1,167, and 503 updates.

According to the announcement, the greatest single-day highest reconciled data was 2,213 on Friday.

For a long time, the Maharashtra government has included the previous week’s statistics in practically every state health bulletin. However, in response to criticism from the opposition, the government chose to reconcile the missing data.

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Every night at midnight, the death list is retrieved from the state’s analytics portal, and duplicate entries are eliminated. Following that, the list is given to local authorities for verification. By 5 p.m., the final list has to be sent out.

According to the official announcement, such reconciliation takes place every two weeks.

Hospitals at the district level do not update information in real-time. The two reasons for the delay are a lack of staff owing to a large number of patients in April and May and an emphasis on oxygen and bed management during the second wave.

“While a city like Mumbai may have a system in place, many districts, especially the smaller ones, lack the manpower and expertise to do so,” officials told NDTV.