Affecting around 52 crore people, the COVID-19 pandemic has hit every nook and corner of the world, contributing to 1.5 crore excess deaths from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2021 as per the latest World Health Organization (WHO) estimates.
The pandemic has also left India heavily affected, with times when the per day cases rose to more than 90,000 during the first wave period starting from March 2020. Efforts are carried out throughout the world to mathematically model and fit the available datasets to estimate the excess mortality attributable to COVID-19 owing to the fundamentality of mortality estimates for public health decision making.
The estimate by The Lancet places India at first having the highest number of cumulative excess deaths due to COVID-19 at the level of 41 lakh based on vital registration system data from 12 States.
