Annual death estimates missing from CRS 2020 report

This comes after India questioned the validity of the WHO Covid death report that said 3 times more deaths happened than recorded

A vital piece of statistics on India’s annual death estimate is missing in the Civil Registration System, 2020 report unlike previous such reports, raising new questions about the Union Health Ministry’s claim of the country registering “99.9 per cent” of its deaths in 2020 - the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, marked by a stringent lockdown.

Since 2012, the CRS reports carry “death rates” and “estimated deaths” for the country as well as for each state and union territory. Against such estimates, the actual numbers of recorded deaths are compared to check what percentages of deaths have been registered.

The 2020 report doesn’t carry any statistics on death rates, which are calculated through the sample registration survey. Yet, the ministry in a press statement on May 5 claimed that the level of death registration in 2020 was 99.9 per cent against the number of estimated deaths without disclosing the death rates.

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Let’s take the 2019 report as an example. The SRS based death rate for 2019 is 6.2 per 1,000 population, because of which the number of projected deaths for the entire country was over 83 lakh. With 76.41 lakh death registration, the level of death registration stood at 92 per cent.

Similarly in 2018, the death rate was 6.2 and the level of registration was 86 per cent. It was 6.3 and 79.6 per cent in 2017. In 2012, the death rate was 7 and the level of registration was 69.3 per cent.

Last week, the ministry claimed 99.9 per cent registration as the total number of estimated deaths was over 81.2 lakh of which 81.15 lakh plus were registered. Such a claim, however, was questioned by experts.

“India is nowhere close to 99 per cent of deaths registered. The Registrar General of India’s official total of deaths at about 8.3 million per year is well short of the 10 million per year that the UN/WHO and other demographers estimate for India. This is because the Sample Registration Survey on which the 8.3 million deaths are based has under-counts of about 14-15 per cent,” Prabhat Jha, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto told DH last week.

“In addition, claiming 99 per cent coverage when in fact some of those were excess Covid-19 deaths makes no sense.”

The ministry hasn’t offered any clarifications on why the CRS, 2020 report doesn’t contain SRS death rates and state-wise breakup. Also how 99.9 per cent of death registration was possible when Uttar Pradesh and Bihar recorded only 50-60 per cent of their deaths a year back.

In 2019, Bihar registered 51 per cent of its deaths while Uttar Pradesh counted 63 per cent. It was 59 per cent in Jharkhand, 21 per cent in Manipur, 30 per cent in Nagaland, 38 per cent in Arunachal Pradesh and 67 per cent in Jammu and Kashmir.

A year later, the ministry claimed 99.9 per cent registration, suggesting counting almost all dead in 36 states and union territories – a proposition that experts refused to accept.

"During the pandemic years, the problems of birth and death registration worsened as the staff were shifted to other departments. Registration of birth and death are not considered priority work in the states,” commented T Sundararaman, former executive director of the National Health Systems Resource Centre, here. Several states admitted that they could not capture every death in their states due to Covid-19, staff shortage and poor awareness of people.