Statement: A city's three hospitals report 1,100, 800 and 600 admissions for dengue over the season, and a newspaper writes that 2,500 of the city's residents were admitted for dengue. When a case turns severe, the smaller hospitals send the patient on to the largest, which enters him as a fresh admission of its own. Which of the following courses of action follows from the statement?

Each hospital's figure is correct for that hospital, and the fault appears only when the three are added, because the referral practice guarantees that some patients sit in two of the three sets. What is called for is the step that removes the overlap — matching the entries person by person — after which a sound figure for the city can be published. Barring the newspaper from hospital figures throws away the only source there is instead of correcting it. Stopping the referrals would sacrifice the care of severe patients to tidy a statistic. And halving the total puts a guess in place of a count, and there is nothing in the statement to suggest that half of the 2,500 were transferred.