Covid death count don't reflect actual scale of pandemic, says World Bank in Asia report

In its report on South Asia released today, the World Bank cited previously reported study by the former chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian and others that estimates total Covid deaths in the country at 4 million or 4.9 million based on two separate methodologies.

The government’s official estimate for Covid deaths is 0.45 million.

In a separate box on ‘Alternative measures of Covid-19 deaths’ included in the report, the bank says there is growing sense that the official counts are under estimated and do not reflect the actual scale of the pandemic.


“The undercount of deaths can be especially severe for developing countries,” it said.

It gives three reasons for the undercount of deaths. One, 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.

Two, because of inadequate testing, especially in rural areas, the official counts in many countries exclude COVID victims who did not test positive for coronavirus before death. Three, the system for keeping vital records is outdated.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.

As an alternative measure, excess mortality is considered a more comprehensive and robust measure of deaths, it said. These measures use both official and survey data, as well as statistical modelling.

The numbers are from the “Three New Estimates of India’s All-Cause Excess Mortality During the COVID-19 Pandemic” by Anand, Abhishek, Justin Sandefur, and Arvind Subramanian, a CGD Working Paper 589, Center for Global Development, Washington, DC.