3.4 million Covid-19 deaths in India, far higher than official toll: Science journal

A series of recent studies in the coveted Science journal notes that several million Covid-19 deaths have most likely gone unreported in India.

A team of researchers in Canada, India and the United States estimated that roughly 3 million Covid deaths during the country's first and second waves of infection remain unaccounted for by the government.

Dr. Prabhat Jha, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Toronto in Canada, who led the research found that as many as 3.4 million Covid deaths were probably undercounted from June 2020 to July 2021. He said many of those deaths occurred last spring when India was hit especially hard by the delta variant.

Jha, who is also director of the Centre for Global Health Research at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, said the discrepancy is largely because of the uneven reach of India's death registration systems. He added that it's a problem that predates the pandemic.

The studies confirm long-held suspicions among epidemiologists that India's official record of 483,178 Covid deaths may have significantly undercounted coronavirus' true devastation.