Lithuania's statistics office reported 1,493 new coronavirus infections and 25 deaths on Saturday morning.
On Friday, it reported 3,322 new cases and 130 deaths. However, the National Public Health Centre (NVSC) said the latter figure – which would have been by far the highest daily death toll to date – included 88 older cases that had not been previously reported.
“These are belated death figures that hospitals had not reported to us under standard protocol. They were asked, on our initiative, to send us the information,” the centre's spokeswoman Austina Vženiauskienė told reporters on Friday.
The country's statistics office, Statistics Lithuania, said that in order to avoid similar inconsistencies in the future, it would take information from hospitals' own electronic records (e.sveikata) rather than the NVSC.
The centre has come under criticism for inconsistencies in coronavirus statistics it releases every day.
In mid-December, Lithuania's Centre of Registers said there were 153 more Covid-19 deaths on e.sveikata than reported by the NVSC.
Earlier this week, the Health Ministry said it found 804 previously unaccounted coronavirus-related deaths: 324 caused directly by Covid-19 and 480 deaths of coronavirus-infected people caused by conditions.
In all, Lithuania has so far reported 145,399 infections, of which 66,244 are active cases, while 76,703 people have already recovered.
The official death toll now stands at 1,614.
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