An alarming new study has shed light on the staggering human cost of the COVID-19 pandemic in India, revealing that the country experienced 11.9 lakh excess deaths in 2020, a figure that is approximately eight times higher than the official COVID-19 death toll.
This study, conducted by researchers including those from the University of Oxford, UK, indicates a 17 percent increase in mortality compared to 2019 and is 1.5 times higher than estimates by the World Health Organisation.
The research utilised data from over 7.65 lakh individuals and aimed to estimate changes in life expectancy at birth, categorised by gender and social group, between 2019 and 2020.
The data was derived from the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5), providing a robust foundation for the study's findings.
The authors pressed on that one-third of the global pandemic excess deaths are thought to have occurred in India.
The life expectancy for women saw a significant decline of 3.1 years, while men experienced a reduction of 2.1 years.
The authors attributed these gender disparities to inequalities in healthcare access and resource distribution within households, highlighting a troubling trend that contrasts with patterns observed in high-income countries where excess deaths were predominantly higher among men.
In a deeper dive into social demographics, the study found stark differences in the impact of the pandemic on various groups.
High caste Hindus experienced a life expectancy decline of 1.3 years.
In stark contrast, Muslims and Scheduled Tribes saw their life expectancies plummet by 5.4 years and 4.1 years, respectively.
The researchers noted that the pandemic exacerbated existing disparities, widening the gap between privileged and marginalised social groups in India.
"Marginalised groups already had lower life expectancy, and the pandemic further increased the gap between the most privileged Indian social groups, and the most marginalised social groups in India," remarked Aashish Gupta, the study's first author and a research fellow at the University of Oxford.
The study also highlighted a troubling trend in mortality across different age groups.
While high-income countries primarily saw increased deaths among those aged 60 years and above, India experienced a rise in deaths across all age groups, most notably among the youngest and the oldest.
The researchers suggested that increased vulnerability to COVID-19 infection among children in certain areas and the indirect effects of the pandemic and lockdowns, such as deteriorating economic conditions and disruptions to public health services, contributed to the higher mortality rates among younger populations.
"Using unique demographic and health survey data, our study highlights the importance of focusing on inequality when measuring mortality and shows that pandemics can worsen, rather than equalise, existing disparities," said Ridhi Kashyap, a professor of demography and computational social science at the University of Oxford.
"This was particularly noticeable on the role that COVID-19 had in further exacerbating the health impacts of pre-pandemic gender disparities," Kashyap added.
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare swiftly responded to the study, labeling its estimates as "gross and misleading."
In a strongly worded statement, the ministry criticised the study’s methodology, particularly its extrapolation of mortality data from a subset of households surveyed in the NFHS to the entire country.
"The NFHS sample is representative of the country only when it is considered as a whole. The 23 percent of households included in this analysis from part of 14 states cannot be considered representative of the country," the ministry asserted.
Moreover, the ministry cited the robustness of India’s Civil Registration System (CRS), which recorded a substantial increase in death registrations, rising from 92 percent in 2019 to over 99 percent in 2020.
This increase, the statement argued, was not solely attributable to the pandemic, further questioning the study’s findings.
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