Chennai: In a major bureaucratic move at a time when the State is facing crisis due to increasing number of Covid-19 cases, the Tamilnadu governmnet today removed Beela Rajesh from the post of Health Secretary.
She has been replaced by J Radhakrishnan, who is presently the special officer to contain the spread of coronavirus in Greater Chennai Corporation limits.
Interestingly, it was Radhakrishnan who held the post before Beela. Beela has now been posted as Commercial Taxes Secretary.
The transfer has come at a time when the Health department is facing criticism for its way of handling Covid-19.
According to reports, a team of officials from the Directorate of Public Health who visited Greater Chennai Corporation’s headquarters Ripon Buildings found the death register maintained by the civic body on had recorded 236 more deaths than the state register.
It is said that if these deaths had been added, the fatality rate in the state would be close to 1.5 per cent, against the 0.7 per cent reported by State officials.
A few officials cited procedural lapse as the reason behind mismatch, since there was no system of reporting deaths recorded in the Chennai Corporationās registry to the government on a daily basis.
Beela Rajesh had said a committee has been formed to look into the issue.Ā A nine-member committee will now audit all coronavirus deaths in Chennai, where it is suspected that most of the deaths not included in the government data occurred.
Beela Rajesh said the process would be completed in two weeks and “if there are any cases left out, it would be added to the official figures”.