Ground Report | New Delhi: Death toll due to Covid; The number of people who lost their lives due to the coronavirus epidemic in India can be up to 49 lakhs. This has come to the fore in a new study. America’s Center for Global Development has done this study and former Chief Economic Advisor of India Arvind Subramanian is one of its authors.
In the study, this figure has been drawn by comparing the total deaths in previous years with the total deaths during the epidemic. Comparing the total deaths in different years, the study results said that from the start of the pandemic last year till June this year, India had at least 34 lakh and a maximum of 49 lakh more deaths.
Death toll due to Covid
These figures also include data on the second wave of corona infection caused by the delta variant in April-May. In this wave, almost every family in the country was affected by Corona.
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The study said, “It is clear from the statistics that many people, not thousands but lakhs, lost their lives. This is the biggest human tragedy of India after independence.” Corona may not be the cause of all the excess deaths in the study, but according to experts, counting the excess deaths during the epidemic compared to other years is the best way to find out the true impact of the epidemic.
The number of deaths due to corona in the country given in the study is more than 10 times more than the official figure. Officially India has recorded 4.18 lakh deaths, but since the beginning, various governments have been accused of hiding the deaths.
Apart from this, the lack of records of deaths at home due to the collapse of the health system during the second wave is also one of the reasons for this difference.
It is worth noting that in the past, many organizations have declared the number of deaths due to corona in India to be many times more than the official figures. The New York Times in its analysis had said that there were at least six lakh deaths due to corona in India, while the maximum figure was many times higher than this.
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At the same time, The Economist magazine said that the actual deaths were five to seven times higher than the official figure. The claim of many times more deaths also seems correct because, in the fourth serosurvey, 67.6 percent of the country’s population above 6 years of age has been found infected with corona.
This figure is around 100 crores, while officially only 3.13 crore cases have been reported in the country so far. Millions of cases not being caught further strengthen the claims of non-recording most of the deaths.
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