The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated the number of deaths in India directly or indirectly attributable to COVID-19 to be 4.74 million. This is the highest for any country and nine times the nation’s official count of 5,24,000 as of May 2022. The WHO numbers are derived through robust statistical methods that consider “excess” deaths during the pandemic period. The WHO has models that India has objected to.
The WHO numbers come as an embarrassment for the government, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed in Parliament on February 8, 2022 that “India’s efforts (in tackling the pandemic) are being appreciated around the world”. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has questioned the use of mathematical models when “authentic data” is available from India. As per this data, India’s total reported deaths from all causes in 2020 were 4,75,000 more than the previous year. Surprisingly, the year-on-year increase in deaths was higher in the years immediately preceding the pandemic — about 6,95,000 in 2019 over 2018, and 4,87,000 in 2018 over 2017, according to official data.
There is a lot of scepticism over the Indian numbers given the irreconcilable and alarming discrepancy between India’s count and the WHO estimates. The government has received a lot of flak for the way it handled the pandemic — starting from the sudden and total lockdown to the shortage of oxygen to the way many had to struggle to get admitted in hospitals and died waiting for a bed to the slowness with which vaccination was rolled out.
