While there is no doubt that India’s official Covid-19 death toll is an underestimate, as it is in most other nations, the World Health Organization’s “excess mortality” estimates revealed on Thursday raise various problems.
Overall death data, historical trends in death reporting, and Covid death compensation applications from states contradict the WHO’s prediction of 47.4 lakh Covid-related fatalities in India in 2020 and 2021.
If the WHO figures are correct, India missed 90% of all Covid-19 deaths in the first two years of the epidemic, and probably millions of deaths went unnoticed.
Past research indicates that India accounts for almost 90% of all fatalities worldwide. Several demographic experts interviewed by The Indian Express in recent weeks indicated that missing such a big number of fatalities was “very implausible.”
According to the WHO, 8.3 lakh people died from Covid-19 in 2020; India’s official Covid-19 toll for that year is 1.49 lakh. According to the government, an estimated 81.2 lakh persons died in the country in that year from all causes. This is in line with previous statistics, which reveals that on average, 83.5 lakh people died in the nation per year during the last 15 years.
India accounted for 92% of these deaths in 2019. Death registrations have increased dramatically in recent years, from 79 percent in 2017 to 86 percent in 2018, and 92 percent in 2019. The government also stated in their announcement that 99.95% of all fatalities will be reported in 2020.
If Covid-19 causes 8.3 lakh of the 81.2 lakh fatalities, as the WHO claims, non-Covid mortality in 2020 will be roughly 73 lakhs. Since 2007, when data is available, India’s overall annual death toll has never been below 80 lakhs.
According to WHO predictions, 39.1 lakh Covid-19 fatalities will occur in 2021. This is at least 4 lakhs more than the rest of the globe reported in that year.
The official death toll from Covid-19 in India for 2021 is 3.32 lakh. That means India was responsible for nearly 92% of Covid-19 deaths in that year. There is an extra incentive for patients to have their deaths reported now that the government is paying required financial compensation for every Covid-19 death.
Compensation claims, in fact, provide new insight on the controversy regarding the number of Covid-19 fatalities in the country. According to data from 11 states that account for 75% of the country’s death toll, the total number of compensation applications is less than twice the combined death toll in these states. In Gujarat, the number of applications is more than ten times the number of fatalities, whereas in Kerala, the number of applications is fewer than the number of deaths.
Even in Bihar, applications are less than overall deaths, indicating that compensation claims may not be a perfect method of determining the true number of deaths. Apart from the fact that the wealthy are unlikely to file these claims for Rs 50,000 in compensation, challenges with access to government institutions and services may also be a deterrent to individuals registering these claims. At the same time, though, there is a chance that people may file false applications.
The Supreme Court has previously issued a warning against making false claims, and Maharashtra has rejected over 60,000 petitions that were shown to be false.
The final issue is that the application numbers are nothing near those reported by the WHO.
The WHO figures also suggest that India’s Covid-19 fatalities per million population is 3,448, rather than the official death toll of 384. The worldwide death per million average is at 804. With the exception of Goa, Kerala currently has the highest mortality rate per million inhabitants in India. Kerala, which is reputed to be one of the better states for preserving records, lost over 1,950 persons per million inhabitants.
Even if Kerala has counted 100% of its deaths (which it hasn’t because it continues to report back-dated deaths almost every day), some experts argue that extrapolating its death per million number to the entire country – as an academic exercise – would result in about 26.5 lakh Covid-linked deaths, which is still just over half of WHO’s numbers.
Once the data from the Sample Registration Survey (SRS) is released, population scientists believe the real mortality count will not be a subject of guesswork or modelling. SRS is a survey-based sampling method for estimating the annual number of births and deaths. We know that on average, 83.5 lakh people die in the country every year because of this practise.
States will continue to add backdated deaths to the count following verification, they said. Kerala does it on a daily basis, whereas other states do it on a more irregular basis. Following a data reconciliation effort, Assam recently added almost 1,300 fatalities to its total. Maharashtra just added 4,000 more fatalities to its count.
