BIRN editor says many more COVID-19 deaths than officially reported

BIRN Editor Milorad Ivanovic said that 1,080 people have been entered into the state-administered COVID-19 data base at the Batut Public Health Institute adding that BIRN reported 632 as the lowest number of deaths that its journalists determined were certainly coronavirus-related. The official figure for COVID-19 deaths released on Sunday by the Serbian Health Ministry is 311.  

Speaking on the Impression of the Week talk show on Nova TV, Ivanovic said that BIRN reported that figure because the data for those COVID-19 patients was complete and added that the data for the other deaths entered into the data base was incomplete. “Those others had one negative coronavirus test, the data was not clear or has been lost in the meantime,” he said.  

Ivanovic explained that the data in the state-administered data base is gathered from all COVID hospitals and medical facilities every day to keep track of the pandemic, including data on deaths. He said BIRN did not contact Prime Minister Ana Brnabic to get confirmation for the data but did contact her cabinet official in charge of the data base, Health Minister Zlatibor Loncar, epidemiologist Predrag Kon and the Public Health Institute CEO as well as others who knew about the data base.

He said that the Public Health Institute, Health Insurance Fund (RFZO), Health Ministry and government had access to the data every day an hour before it was published on the Health Ministry’s COVID19.rs web site. He said that some of the doctors on the government’s pandemic Crisis Staff did not have access to the data base. “The figures were lowered for some reason and there’s a pattern to who that was done. The Public Health Institute drafted a report for the government from the data base every day at 2:00 pm,” Ivanovic said.

The COVID19.rs web site publishes new data for the previous 24 hours every day at 3:00 pm.

“The Batut data base said that 38 people died on April 13 and we were told that just six died that day,” Ivanovic said. “We just want an explanation of why this was done,” he said.