Pandemic deaths in India likely exceed 3 million, study finds

The number of people who have died so far in the coronavirus pandemic in India is expected to exceed three million – nearly 10 times the official death toll from Covid-19 – making it one of the worst human tragedies in the world. country’s history, according to a new study.

In a comprehensive review of the true toll of the pandemic in the sprawling nation of 1.4 billion people, the Center for Global Development, a Washington research institute, attempted to quantify the excessive deaths from all causes during the pandemic on the state database, international estimates, serological studies and household surveys.

“The real deaths are likely to number in the millions, not the hundreds of thousands, arguably the worst human tragedy in India,” said its authors, one of whom is a former chief economic adviser. from the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Official government figures have been called into question on several occasions. Even as funeral pyres lit up the night sky and bodies washed up on the Ganges, with dead people all around, the Indian government vastly underestimated the scale of the devastation.

The study published Tuesday estimated that between 3.4 and 4.7 million more people than expected died between January 2020 and June 2021, and includes an estimate suggesting that deaths from Covid-19 alone could have reached four million.

“Estimating Covid deaths with statistical confidence can prove elusive,” the authors wrote. “But all estimates suggest that the death toll from the pandemic is likely to be an order of magnitude higher than the official number of 400,000; they also suggest that the first wave was deadlier than you think.

The authors said the undercoverage of deaths after the first wave of infections last year may be due, in part, to the fact that it had ‘spread over time’, as opposed to the steep curve. of the second wave when hundreds of thousands of people died from lack of oxygen, beds and vaccines.

The study said the country’s inability to capture “the scale of the tragedy in real time” during its first wave from March 2020 to February 2021 may have caused “the collective complacency that led to the horrors of the second. wave”.

At the height of Wave 2, interviews with New York Times reporters at cremation grounds in three Indian states revealed a vast pattern of deaths far exceeding official figures.

Nervous politicians and hospital administrators may also have underestimated or overlooked large numbers of deaths, analysts said. And grieving families may also hide links to Covid, out of shame, adding to the confusion.

India is still reporting nearly 40,000 new cases and around 500 deaths per day, according to a New York Times database. Less than 7 percent of the population is fully immunized.

“The challenge of the pandemic is far from over,” said Arvind Subramanian, former chief economic adviser to Mr. Modi and a senior researcher at Brown University who is a co-author of the study. “Vaccination offers the best hope, but its pace must be considerably accelerated. “

Mr Modi’s government has warned of an impending third wave of infections, which government scientists say could strike as early as August.

“The spirit of this article is not to privilege an estimate, but simply to present it transparently,” said the authors of the excessive death study, Abhishek Anand, Justin Sandefur and Dr Subramanian.

“Given all the difficulties, it will be difficult to get the true estimate and only by bringing together data from different sources will we improve our understanding of the reality of the pandemic.”