Incorporating the Chief Ministers instructions issued on 18 September, the Rajasthan Health department seems to have taken cogniscance of the erroneous reporting of COVID numbers at state level.

UdaipurTimes raised this issue on 31 August, when a 15 days statistics apparently showed discrepancy in COVID reporting numbers for Udaipur at district level, vis-a-vis reporting at the state level.  The under reporting at state level continued unabated and an under reporting of upto 500 positive COVID cases and a 15% under reporting discrepancy was observed.

On 18 September, the Chief Ministers office took cogniscance of the reports presented by leading dailies as well on the discrepancies and issued orders to the department as well as CMHO and Collectors of various districts to ensure that the numbers fed to the state department were correct and the state department was instructed to check and report correct numbers.

On 19 September, the CMHO Udaipur issued clarification on the reporting, and as per the CMHO office it was found that the testing centers were reporting duplicate positive cases (retest). 343 positive cases were over reported in the local district reporting and the discrepancy was observed across the last 15 days.

The corrected numbers have been reported at the district level and the corrections were also sent to the state health department office.

In the reports of the state department on both 19 and 20 September, it was observed that the numbers were matching for Udaipur. We cannot assume that all state numbers are matching, however, the CM instructions have ensured that the state health department reports numbers in realtime.