Washington: Nearly 50 lakh (4.9 million) may have died from Covid-19 in India between January 2020 and June 2021, making it arguably the country’s worst human tragedy since the Partition and Independence, a new US study has said, even as the Delta variant of the coronavirus is causing a fresh wave of concern across the world.
Based on serological studies, household surveys, official data from state-level civic bodies, and international estimates, the Washington-based Center for Global Development outlined in a report released on Tuesday three death estimates in India, all of which pointed to multiples of the official 4,00,000 count.
Even a moderate estimate outlined in the study, based on extrapolation of state-level civic registration from seven states, suggested 3.4 million excess deaths. In a second calculation, applying international estimates of age-specific infection fatality rates (IFR) to Indian seroprevalence data implied a higher toll of around 4 million. A third calculation in the report, based on analysis of the Consumer Pyramid Household Survey, a longitudinal panel of over 8,00,000 individuals across all states, yielded an estimate of 4.9 million excess deaths.
Acknowledging that estimating Covid-deaths with statistical confidence may prove elusive, the report however maintained that the toll “is likely to be an order of magnitude greater than the official count”.
The report, authored by Abhishek Anand, Justin Sandefur and Arvind Subramanian, said the first wave “was also more lethal than is widely believed” and about 2 million people may have died in the first wave alone. Arvind Subramanian is former chief economic aviser to the Indian government.
