India's Covid deaths 6 times more than official count: Study

The study is yet another piece of evidence in support of huge under-counting of Covid deaths in India

A new study on Wednesday again pegged India's Covid-19 mortality at 3.2-3.7 million by November 2021 providing yet another piece of evidence in support of huge under-counting of Covid deaths in India.

Christophe Guilmoto, a researcher at Centre de Sciences Humaines, Delhi has estimated India's Covid death toll at almost six to eight times higher than the official toll, months after the ferocious second wave -- turning India into one of the world's most severely Covid-affected nations.

For comparison, by early November, India’s official Covid toll was 4,59,000, which has now crossed the 5 lakh mark

If 3.2–3.7 million Covid-19 deaths are taken into account, India would emerge as the country with by far the largest number of Covid-19 deaths in the world, well ahead of the USA (0.8 million), Brazil (0.6), or Mexico (0.3).

With such revised estimates, the global Covid death toll would rise by several million to 7.8–8.3 million till November 1, 2021.

Another outcome of the new estimation relates to Covid mortality rates. The highest crude Covid death rates per inhabitant in November 2021 are observed in Peru with 6 per 1,000 and in Eastern Europe where several countries record rates above 3 per 1,000.

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India’s revised Covid-19 death rate of 2.3–2.6 per 1,000 is four times as high as the world's average (0.6) and would place India at the 13-19th rank among the most affected countries — rather than at the 127th rank according to official estimates.

The Union Health Ministry earlier rejected past findings with similar conclusions, noting that underlying assumptions of such studies were flawed.

"We are used to criticisms of our computations. But a gap existed between the deaths reported by the government and what was reported from the ground. There was indirect evidence of serious underestimate, but it was difficult to estimate," Guilmoto told DH.

The CSH scientist arrived at his estimate by looking at Covid-19 mortality in four different sets of populations and subsequently adopting a novel triangulation process for national death estimates.

The four data sets that he used for the study are (1) general population from Kerala (26,628 Covid deaths) (2) MLAs and MPs (43 deaths with a death rate of 7.4 per 1,000), (2) railway employees (1,952 deaths with rate of 1.5) and (4) school teachers in Karnataka (268 deaths with a rate of 1.36).

These four data sets were used because of the reliability of death estimation, regional representativeness, and demographic characteristics. "Covid-19 data from most of the states was not up to the mark, apart from Kerala and to some extent Karnataka and Tamil Nadu," he said.

In January, Prabhat Jha from the University of Toronto and his coworkers published a study in Science, in which they estimated 3.2 million Covid deaths in India between June 1, 2020 and July 1, 2021, the majority of which occurred from April 1 to July 1, 2021. This is six to seven times higher than the official estimate.

India’s reported Covid death totals are widely believed to be under-reported because of factors like incomplete certification and misattribution to chronic diseases. "Our study finds that Indian Covid-19 deaths are substantially greater than estimated from official reports," Jha reported.

Guilmoto’s study has appeared in the journal PLOS One.

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