49 Lakh ‘Excess Deaths’ In India Due To COVID, US Report

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What has happened?

The ‘excess deaths’ caused during the Covid-19 pandemic — from the start of the pandemic to June this year — may be as high as 49 lakh,
According to a study published by a US-based think tank and authored by India’s former chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian, among others.
India’s official Covid death count as of end-June 2021was around 4 lakh.
The study published by the Center for Global Development (CGD)has been co-authored by Abhishek Anand of Harvard University and Justin Sandefur of CGD, besides Subramanian, who is now with Brown University in the US.

‘Excess deaths’ mean additional fatalities recorded during the pandemic, as compared to a corresponding period in pre-pandemic years.
Excess deaths amid the pandemic could be a potential indicator of undercounting in India’s Covid toll.
However, it is not a measure of unrecorded Covid fatalities alone, but also additional deaths with an indirect Covid link—
For example, patients with non-coronavirus afflictions who died for want of medical attention as much of the healthcare infrastructure shifted towards catering to the pandemic.
The paper adds to multiple reports that point to the fact that India’s official Covid fatality tally may be an underestimate.
Earlier this month, the WHO said the global death tally at the time — around 40 lakh — may be an underestimate as well.
The study also suggests that the first wave may have been more lethal than popularly believed.
Not grasping its scale, it adds, may have “bred the collective complacency that led to the horrors of the second wave”.

According to the researchers, the first estimate, based on CRS data from seven states — extrapolated for a country-wideestimate — suggests 34 lakh excess deaths.
The second, applying international IFR estimates to Indian seroprevalence data, implies a higher toll — around 40 lakh.
The analysis of the Consumer Pyramid Household Survey (CPHS) — which covers over 800,000 individuals across all states — yields an estimate of 49 lakh excess deaths, the researchers add.

Questioning India’s official death toll, the researchers note that its death rate is much lower than other countries like Brazil, Italy, US, and the UK even though these nations have lower infection rates.
Unlike other countries, they add, India still does not have estimates of excess deaths during the Covid pandemic.
With this paper, the researchers add, they seek to “use these three sources to provide three new estimates of all-cause excess mortality for India, during the Covid pandemic for both the first and second waves”.
“Given all the difficulties, getting at the true estimate will be difficult and only by piecing together data from different sources will we improve our understanding of the reality of the pandemic,” they add.

Listing the limitations of each approach, the researchers note that “CRS-based numbers are still not available for all the states” and “they are known to under-count deaths”.
For the second estimate, the researchers say it “is only partly based on Indian data (on infection rates) and assumes IFRs based on other countries whose validity for India is open to question”.

Despite the caveats, they note that “true deaths are likely to be in the several millions not hundreds of thousands, making this arguably India’s worst human tragedy since Partition and Independence”.
The purpose of the paper “has been to report — without in any way endorsing — different data-based estimates”, they add.

Q) Infant mortality does not include?