Status: 07/20/2021 5:44 p.m.
According to a US study, the number of corona deaths in India is many times higher than previously assumed. Researchers at the Center for Global Development estimate that excess mortality since the start of the pandemic could be as high as 4.7 million.
According to calculations by experts, a much higher number of people could have died in India during the corona pandemic than officially stated. The American think tank Center for Global Development estimates based on several sources an excess mortality of 3.4 to 4.9 million additional deaths since the pandemic began in the hard hit country compared to the number of deaths before the pandemic. However, the researchers emphasized that they did not draw any conclusions about the causes of death.
“The true number of deaths is several million, not hundreds of thousands,” the researchers said. The corona pandemic in India is “the worst human tragedy since independence”. The scientists evaluated data on excess mortality for their study, they compared numbers from pre-Corona times with those of the pandemic.
Officially 414,000 corona deaths in India
The authors extrapolated published deaths from seven states, where about half of the population lives. To do this, they evaluated antibody tests in India with international estimates of age-specific death rates of infected people and used regular surveys of around 177,000 households, which also asked whether someone had recently died.
India has officially reported 414,000 corona deaths, the third most worldwide after the US and Brazil. However, experts have questioned the numbers from New Delhi since the beginning of the pandemic. For the most part, however, they did not assume that there was deliberate misinformation, but rather blamed the country’s completely overwhelmed health system.
Experts warn of third wave
The situation in India had worsened dramatically in April and May, among other things in connection with the delta variant of the corona virus discovered there for the first time. In a few days, 400,000 new infections were reported. Hospitals were sometimes so overloaded that people died in parking lots in front of them, the medical oxygen ran out and relatives had to wait even at the crematoria.
In the meantime, the situation has eased again. Between 30,000 and 40,000 new corona cases are reported every day. However, given a low vaccination rate and a return to normal, experts warn of a third wave.