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India's actual death toll is around 40 lakh more the official numbers reported between January 2020 and December 2021, according to a report published in the medical journal Lancet.
As of 11 March, India has recorded 515,745 official COVID-related deaths.
Responding to the Lancet study via their official Twitter handle, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare called its findings 'speculative and misinformed'.
According to the study authors, at the national level, India had an estimated 152.5 excess deaths per 100,000 people over the study period of 2 years, indicating that the impact of the pandemic was much greater than reported.
They compare this to the officially reported COVID-19 mortality rate of 18.3 per 100, 000 people.
To arrive at this data, the study authors also analysed empirical excess mortality from 12 different states in India.
"Most studies put excess deaths during the pandemic at between 3 and 5 million — around seven to eleven times official COVID deaths," Dr Murad Banaji, a mathematician from Middlesex University in the UK, who has been closely mapping India's COVID-19 data told FIT back in February.
Now, this study provides more concrete data— albeit still an estimated number.
The states of Uttarakhand, Manipur, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, and Karnataka had excess mortality rates higher than 200 per 100 000.
On the other hand, Arunachal Pradesh, Telangana, Sikkim, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, and Goa had excess mortality rates that were lower than the global average.
Although reported COVID-19 deaths between 1 January 2020, and 31 Dec 2021, totaled to 59.4 lakh worldwide, the study authors estimate the true numbers to be almost 4 times the number.
After India, the countries that followed with the highest excess COVID mortality rates in the world were the US, Russia, Mexico and Brazil, Indonesia, and Pakistan in that order.
"These seven countries may have accounted for more than half of global excess deaths caused by the pandemic over the 24-month period," according to the study authors.
"The number of excess deaths due to COVID-19 was largest in the regions of South Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, and Eastern Europe," they added.
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