Undercounting of Covid toll in South Asia, including in India: World Bank

NEW DELHI: There is a growing feeling that official counts of Covid-19 deaths have been underestimated in South Asia, including India, and do not reflect the actual scale of the pandemic, the latest World Bank report indicated on Thursday. “The undercount of deaths can be especially severe for developing countries,” said the World Bank’s Fall 2021 economic update for South Asia.

A portion of the main report titled ‘Alternative measures of Covid -19 deaths’, highlighted in a box, carried recent studies that have tried to estimate the undercounting of fatalities, which is also a global issue. Citing official data, the report said the South Asia region accounts for 17% of global Covid-19 cases and more than 11% of deaths caused by the pandemic. It also said that the total official death count from Covid in the region has exceeded half a million.

The report cited several reasons for the probable undercounting of deaths in South Asian countries. First, because of overwhelmed health systems, many Covid deaths occur at home or are indirectly caused by the crisis conditions, and these are excluded from the official counts. Second, because of inadequate testing, especially in rural areas, the official counts in many countries exclude Covid victims who did not test positive for coronavirus infection before death. Third, the system for keeping vital records is outdated. It may take hospitals and civil registries days or even weeks to process death certificates, creating lags in the data, the report said citing several studies.

The box in the report also carried a graphic based on the IHME database titled ‘India’s excess Covid-19 deaths are growing more rapidly than other South Asia countries’. It said the Covid-19 pandemic revealed many shortcomings in the health systems in South Asia.