India’s excess deaths during Covid ‘could be 10 times official toll’

The number of excess deaths in India during the Covid-19 pandemic could be 10 times higher than the official death toll, according to a study that estimates that between 3 million and 4.7 million more people died than would be expected between January 2020 and June 2021. The study, carried out by the US-based Center for Global Development, examined three different sources of data to piece together one of the most comprehensive pictures yet of the pandemic in India.

“India’s official Covid death count as of end-June 2021 is 400,000,” the report says. “The reality is, of course, catastrophically worse … What is tragically clear is that too many people, in the millions rather than hundreds of thousands, may have died.”

Excess deaths are a calculation of how many more people are dying across a defined period of time than usual. While not all excess deaths that occurred during the pandemic would be due to Covid, it is likely that a significant proportion were.

Read more