India’s true coronavirus death toll may be 10 times the official tally, new report claims
- Most experts believe India’s official toll of more than 414,000 dead is a vast undercount but the government has dismissed those concerns
- ‘True deaths are likely to be in the several millions not hundreds of thousands,’ said the report released on Tuesday
India’s excess deaths during the pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official Covid-19 toll, likely making it modern India’s worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus.
The report released on Tuesday estimated excess deaths – the gap between those recorded and those that would have been expected – to be between 3 million to 4.7 million between January 2020 and June 2021. It said an accurate figure may “prove elusive” but the true death toll “is likely to be an order of magnitude greater than the official count”.
“True deaths are likely to be in the several millions not hundreds of thousands, making this arguably India’s worst human tragedy since Partition and independence,” the report said.
The Partition of the British-ruled Indian subcontinent into independent India and Pakistan in 1947 led to the killing of up to 1 million people as gangs of Hindus and Muslims slaughtered each other.
