There were likely 4.7 million deaths, directly or indirectly attributable to COVID-19 in India in 2020 and 2021, according to a report by the World Health Organisation on Thursday. These are the highest, by far, for any country and comprise nearly a third of the 15 million such deaths globally.
India officially estimated only 4.8 lakh cumulative deaths linked to COVID-19 as of December 2021, which implies that the WHO estimate is nearly 10 times the government count. As of May, India’s official COVID-19 death toll is 5.2 lakh.
