What does CRS data tell us about India’s Covid deaths?

The official Covid-19 death toll in India as on May 3 is 522,676. Does this capture the actual mortality due to the pandemic in the country? Some experts believe that the actual death toll is likely to be significantly higher, primarily a result of Covid-19 deaths not being classified as such. People in charge of India’s response to the pandemic believe that the reported number is accurate. The World Health Organization (WHO) is expected to release its Covid excess mortality data this week.

The only piece of empirical, although piecemeal, evidence which has been produced in favour of the argument of underestimated fatalities is an abnormal increase in registered deaths during the pandemic, especially during the second wave which peaked on May 9, 2021. Because official data on registered deaths was not available when these state or even city level estimates were being published by various media organisations, a holistic evaluation of this claim was not possible.

On May 3, the ministry of home affairs published the official birth and death registration numbers for 2020. The annual report of the Civil Registration System (CRS), which contains these statistics, shows that registered deaths increased by 6.2% (474,806 in absolute terms) compared to their 2019 level. This is less than the increase in registered deaths between 2018 and 2019 (690,469 or 9.9%) and also between 2017 and 2018 (486,828 or 7.5%).

Commenting on these numbers, VK Paul, member (health), Niti Aayog, said that the latest CRS numbers show that claims of India’s official Covid-19 death toll being gross underestimates are untrue. “Nobody should use modeling anymore, and come up with exorbitant multiples based on those modeling exercises. Apart from Covid-19 additionality there are other factors such as increase in population, increase in reporting (registrations), more awareness, etc.” he said.

An HT analysis shows that this conclusion is best reserved until the 2021 CRS and 2020 and 2021 SRS numbers are published. Here are four charts which explain this.