From Our Bureau
NEW DELHI: World Bank advisor Philip Scgekkejebs has claimed in an analysis that India had the most excess deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic — 5 million, almost 10 times the figure of 0.5 million admitted by the Modi government.
The United States was so far reported to have witnessed 9.34 lakh deaths, but India surpasses it and the World Bank official says most of India’s excess deaths likely occured during the country’s debilitating second outbreak even as its vaccination drive just took off.
Death data in India has faced numerous allegations of undercounting. The government hasn’t officially admitted them but many of them are based on official sources. The new analysis of Covid-19 data worldwide showed that India may have had the most deaths in the world during the pandemic.
Even though the government has not officially accepted these charges, sticking to its latest death toll of 5,12,107, many figures coming out from various sources are hard to refute as activists and journalists keep noting that the official toll is at odds with the records of the municipals.
Even the Supreme Court was appalled by the data of the compensation claims settled for the kin of the people who succumbed to Covid-19 since they were greater than their respective official tolls.
Moreover, the activists say India my have undercounted deaths that occurred during the pandemic because of other diseases and not Covid-19.
The excess deaths reported by the World Bank consultant is the total of deaths occuring in the given population, by all causes and in a fixed period, minus the number of deaths that are expected as per the historical data.
Earlier this year, epidemiologist Prabhat Jha and his colleagues had reported that India’s actual COVID-19 toll could have been 3.2 million until July 2021.
The Indian government has denied any fatality undercounting on many occasions. Every time a study or a news report made this allegation, the government has issued a press release denying any discrepancies.
P. Arokiasamy, a demography and public health expert, told The Wire Science earlier that India needs a nationwide survey to ascertain the actual number of deaths due to, and during, COVID-19.
Schellekens’s current analysis is based on excess-mortality data from 84 countries that do share this information. The rest of the data, Schellekens writes on his site Pandem-ic, is based on a model to predict the number of excess deaths developed by The Economist.
