India recorded over 30 lakh Covid-19 deaths till July, shows analysis

The total deaths in India due to the coronavirus disease since the pandemic began in January 2020 till July 2021 could be over 3 million, or 30 lakh, an analysis published in Science journal on Friday showed. This period includes the first wave and the devastating second wave of the pandemic.

India had officially reported around 4,00,000 Covid-19 deaths during this period. However, several studies had shown that India was undercounting deaths.

Multiple reports have pointed out that guidelines are not being followed in cases of deaths caused due to post-Covid complications and that crematoria were not maintaining proper records of fatalities.

The research published in Science showed that the toll between January 2020 and June 2021 was between 3.1 million, or 31 lakh, and 3.4 million, or 34 lakh. Of this, about 2.7 million, or 27 lakh, deaths had taken place during the second wave of the pandemic between April and July last year.

The analysis was led by researchers from University of Toronto’s Centre for Global Health Research. it conducted studies on three sources – a national survey and data from two government databases. The government sources are the Health Management Information System of the Union health ministry to report deaths by states and the Civil Registration System fatalities in 10 states.

“Compared to 2019, the increase in non-Covid deaths reported during September-October 2020 exceeded reported Covid-19 deaths but the reverse was true during April-June 2021 [during the second wave],” the report said. “This likely reflects the misclassification of non-Covid deaths.”

The survey was carried out by CVoter, a polling agency, which is also tracking the pandemic, that covered 0.14 million, or 1 lakh 40 thousand, people.

The analysis showed that when government data available on the Health Management Information System was compared to the pre-pandemic period, there was a 27% increase in deaths, including the non-Covid fatalities, across 2 lakh health facilities. The Civil Registration System data also showed 26% excess deaths were recorded in ten states.

Excess deaths is the divergence between all-cause deaths reported this year and in normal years.

“Total excess all-cause deaths were 1.25 million for the ten states that reported about half of national official COVID deaths,” the analysis said. “The median ratio of excess to confirmed Covid-19 deaths ranged from six to seven in the two viral waves for these states.”

The report said that the analysis done using separate methodologies from all the three sources were comparable to each other.

“Despite varying methodologies, each with its own limitations, our three studies and those published earlier point to a substantial under-reporting of deaths in India’s official numbers,” it said. “Most find a much larger excess of deaths in the second viral wave than in the first.”

Meanwhile, Prabhat Jha, the lead author of the analysis, said that death registration in the country had been spotty even before the pandemic. He said that are several factors behind this one of which is politics.

“The Indian government very much is trying to suppress the numbers in the way that they coded the Covid-19 deaths,” Jha said. “I think the political pressures were such that they said, ‘Anything that’s going to come out is going to be embarrassing.’”

Other reports have also said that the coronavirus deaths in India was more than officially recorded.

In June, an article published in The Economist on a research by Christopher Leffler of the Virginia Commonwealth University, suggested that India’s actual toll could be more than 20 lakh. India’s official toll at that time was 3,67,081.

A month before that, The New York Times had reported that India’s toll could be as high as 6 lakh by conservative estimates, and up to 42 lakh in the worst case scenario. At the time of publishing of the report, India’s official toll was 3.15 lakh.

The Centre had dismissed both the reports.