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Latest coronavirus news as of 12pm on 7 January
The potentially massive scale of unrecorded covid-19 deaths in India’s second wave means the official world death toll may be a significant underestimateIndia’s death toll from covid-19 may be six to seven times greater than that officially recorded. The country’s records say that nearly half a million people have died from coronavirus infections so far, but the latest study estimates the real figure is 3.2 million deaths up to July last year.
If correct, this means the worldwide death toll from the coronavirus would be pushed up from 5.4 to 8.1 million – although other countries may also have underestimated their death rates. “This may require substantial upward revision of the World Health Organization’s estimates of cumulative global covid mortality,” Prabhat Jha at the University of Toronto and colleagues say in their paper.
India experienced a huge second wave of coronavirus infections in the first half of 2021, leaving hospitals overwhelmed and a national shortage of oxygen supplies. In common with many other low and middle-income countries, India does not have good systemic methods for recording causes of death, especially those that occur in rural areas. For instance, Jha’s team say that in 2020, an estimated eight in ten deaths did not involve medical certification, which is standard procedure in richer countries.
Jha’s team reached the figure of 3.2 million by using government data on all-cause mortality and an ongoing telephone survey of 140,000 adults across the country, which asked people about covid-19 symptoms and deaths in their households.
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