Explainer | Why India’s official coronavirus numbers understate the true scale of its crisis
- Based on modelling from a previous surge in India, the true infection numbers could be 10 times higher than the official reports indicate
- And in rural India, people often die at home without medical attention, meaning these deaths are vastly under-reported
As daily case counts soar far beyond what other countries have reported, experts caution the official Covid-19 numbers from the world’s second most populous country are likely a massive undercount. But why is India’s data considered inaccurate? Is the data any less accurate than what other nations report? And which numbers give a good indication of the crisis?
Is India counting every case?
India is not counting every coronavirus case, but no nation can. Around the world, official tallies generally report only confirmed cases, not actual infections. Cases are missed because testing is so haphazard and because some people infected by the coronavirus experience mild or even no symptoms.
The more limited the testing, the more cases are being missed. The World Health Organization says countries should be doing 10 to 30 tests per confirmed case.
India is doing about five tests for every confirmed case, according to Our World in Data, an online research site. The US is doing 17 tests per confirmed case. Finland is doing 57 tests per confirmed case.
“There are still lots of people who are not getting tested,” said Dr Prabhat Jha of the University of Toronto. “Entire houses are infected. If one person gets tested in the house and reports they’re positive and everyone else in the house starts having symptoms, it’s obvious they have Covid, so why get tested?”
Jha estimates, based on modelling from a previous surge in India, that the true infection numbers could be 10 times higher than the official reports.