THE REAL TOLL OF COVID IN INDIA

Fresh Covid cases draw attention, but it's the undercounted deaths from 2021 that demand urgent scrutiny and systemic reform

- BY K. SRINATH REDDY

Covid-19 is back in the news because of a rise in the number of persons testing positive in different states of India as well as the release of government data on deaths that occurred in 2021, when the country was devastated by the Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The recent spike in cases due to the less virulent JN.1 and BA.2 sub-lineages of Omicron is not a cause for panic, as no deaths have been reported. However, there is concern about the underestimation of Covid-related deaths in earlier official reports. Questions have been raised about why previous estimates were low and the marked interstate variations in the gap between reported Covid deaths and Covid-attributable excess deaths in 2021.