bengaluru the karnataka governments daily covid19 bulletin continues to underreport infections to the tune of tens of thousands of cases a quick glance of data reveals as of wednesday while the states cumulative infections was 1439822 according to the official data patient numbers allotted that day had crossed 146 lakhtypically the days bulletin collates and updates data on infections deaths and discharges occurring the previous day wednesdays numbers for instance pertain to the data collected till tuesdaywednesday midnighteven accounting for this lag random cases that toi could track revealed that nearly 25000 infected people are yet to be accounted in karnatakas tally sources in national health mission nhm which prepares the daily bulletins confirmed that p numbers or patient numbers reflect the states total number of infected and the the daily data could be lagging behind the actual number by thousandslag is more frequent of late due to increase in cases says officialsimply put not all persons testing positive for covid are making it to the states official data the next day despite their positivity being on authorities radar and them being allocated pnumbers and district numbersfor instance three bengalureans who tested positive on april 27 were given p numbers 1464777 1455336 and 1442063 but none of them made it to the bulletin the next day eleven individuals who died of covid and were listed under fatalities in the april 27 bulletin had p numbers that were way beyond the states cumulative covid tally of 1400775 they included a 45yearold man from bidar p number 1420952 who died on april 26 and a 78yearold kalaburagi man p number 1428158 who died on april 25health minister k sudhakar and nhm mission director arundhathi chandrashekar did not respond to queries health commissioner kv trilok chandra said he would check with the state war room and revertas soon as a patient tests positive the lab is supposed to upload the result to the icmr portal and within an hour a state patient number and district patient number bu no in case of bengaluru city is allotted at the state levelwe dont deny the fact that there is a difference of the order of a few thousands in the number of cases reported and what is mentioned in the daily bulletin at the state level we only compile data from all the districts the districts send us the data based on the number of fresh cases they have traced a senior nhm official said though the p number is generated for all patients testing positive several are untraceable and unresponsive due to stigma we have even taken police help to trace such cases we ask the districts to refresh the data the matter has been discussed in meetings toohowever a technical expert committee member had a different take there is a lag in data uploading some duplicates get deleted and there will always be a differencea health department official said the lag is increasingly occurring over the past few days due to a