The World Health Organization said in a report last week that 14.9 million people had died of Covid-19 across the world since the beginning of the pandemic.바카라 웹사이트
Of these 14.9 million deaths, 4.7 million deaths were from India alone – more than a third of the world라이브 바카라 death toll and over 10 times of the official Indian toll. The Centre rejected the report, saying WHO라이브 바카라 methodology was flawed and that it should have trusted the official Indian data.
The WHO and Centre follow two different methods. While the Centre collates numbers provided by all the states and updates them every morning, the WHO arrived at its figure with a mathematical model. There is also a difference in the definition of death that would be added to the toll.
Here we will explain the three methods used to calculate death toll, their advantages as well as shortcomings, and whether there has been undercounting of Covid-19 deaths so far in India – hard evidence, no opinion.바카라 웹사이트
Different methods to count Covid deaths
The most common method is a nodal agency collating numbers published by all jurisdictions, such as the Indian health ministry publishing an update every morning after collating the numbers provided by all the states in the last 24 hours. In turn, the states get their numbers from districts.바카라 웹사이트
The second method is where you rely on independent sources of data, such as media reports, independent surveys, and numbers taken from hospitals.바카라 웹사이트
The third method, used by the WHO, is the “excess mortality” method. Excess mortality is calculated as the difference between the number of people expected to die in a year based on past year라이브 바카라 data and the number of actual deaths – implying that the “excess” number of “abnormal” deaths are because of the pandemic.바카라 웹사이트
The third method not just calculates deaths caused directly by Covid-19 but also deaths indirectly caused by it. Using this method, a study published in Lancet in March calculated 18.2 worldwide deaths. For India, the number was 4.7 million.바카라 웹사이트
The advantages and disadvantages
In the first method, there are two drawbacks. One, not every jurisdiction might have a robust reporting mechanism, which might result in undercounting. Two, criteria might be different in different places.바카라 웹사이트
For example, there has been controversy in India whether a person with a pre-existing condition (comorbidity) after testing Covid-19 positive would be counted as a coronavirus fatality. 바카라 웹사이트
In the second method, an advantage is that you are free from the constraints of being dependent on official data. On the other hand, you would need presence in every district, every block, and you’d need to get numbers from every hospital, which would require a very large workforce.바카라 웹사이트
While this method can work in a smaller jurisdiction, it라이브 바카라 very hard to implement at India라이브 바카라 scale.
In the third method, an advantage is that it captures a fuller scale of the pandemic, as it counts not only deaths from Covid-19 but also deaths that it caused indirectly, such as non-Covid patients who died as they could not avail treatments because of hospitals being overwhelmed or hospitals suspending non-Covid treatments.바카라 웹사이트
Has there been undercounting in India?
To some extent, yes.바카라 웹사이트
A number of Indian states, such as Bihar, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, and West Bengal have revised their Covid-19 death tolls, reconciling deaths to their tallies that went unreported earlier.바카라 웹사이트
Sometimes, this reconciling exercise was done after judicial orders, and sometimes it was done after media investigations that captured the disparity between the reality on the ground and the picture presented by the numbers.바카라 웹사이트
Kerala has been consistently reconciling previously unreported deaths. On Thursday, while the rest of India reported seven deaths, Kerala reported 17 – all of which were previously reconciled deaths.바카라 웹사이트
There is also anecdotal evidence suggesting some people died without getting their test results in the deadly second wave. Since they were outside the official system, they are unlikely to feature in any tally.바카라 웹사이트
