coronavirus deaths being published by some agencies with respect to India must stop. Paul referred to a recent publication in the Lancet which claimed that India's estimated cumulative Covid deaths between January 2020 and December 2021 were over eight times higher than reported.
The documented deaths due to Covid in India over that period was around 4,89,000, the Lancet had claimed in its paper entitled 'Estimating excess mortality due to the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic analysis of COVID-19-related mortality, 2020-21'.
However, this week the Centre published the Civil Registration System (CRS) report 2020 based on birth and death reports. And, as per this data, the number of registered deaths has gone up from 76.4 lakh in 2019 to 81.2 lakhs in 2020, an increase of 6.2%.
Explaining the science and statistics behind the number of deaths, the NITI Aayog member said, "The number of deaths includes fatalities reported due to all the causes including Covid-19, natural, maternal, infant, everything".