The health and family welfare ministry issued a statement on May 5 disputing the World Health Organisation’s estimate of Covid deaths in India. The WHO had said that India lost 47.4 lakh people to Covid in 2020 and 2021, several times the Indian government’s tally of 5.24 lakh. The ministry claimed that the WHO estimate was “totally removed from reality” and way out of agreement with the “extremely robust” Civil Registration System, or CRS, which is used to record vital statistics such as births and deaths in the country.
But the latest CRS report, for 2020, released two days before the WHO came out with its estimate, itself casts questions about the health ministry’s statement. It claims that India recorded 99.99% of all deaths in 2020, totalling 81.15 lakh. In 2019, the CRS had registered only about 92% of all deaths, totalling 76.41 lakh. How was this percentage calculated? “The level of registration is defined as the percentage of registered births and deaths to the births and deaths estimated through SRS,” the 2019 report explains, referring to the Sample Registration System.
