New Delhi (dpa) – At least 1,150 deaths linked to Covid-19 have not been included in New Delhi’s official fatalities count, indicating that India’s actual number of deaths from the pandemic might be much higher, according to an investigation published on Tuesday.
Aerial photographs showing the scale of mass cremations in the capital have raised concerns about a mismatch between government numbers and the actual death count. Makeshift pyres are being built in crematoriums as New Delhi, India’s worst-hit city, is running out of space to cremate its dead.
An independent investigation by broadcaster NDTV, which visited the city’s civic body offices and seven cremation grounds, found that hundreds of deaths linked to the coronavirus did not make it to the official list of Covid-19 fatalities.
Data collected by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) from 26 crematoriums showed 3,096 cremations of Covid-19 victims were conducted between April 18 and April 24, the report said.
But in the same period, the the Delhi government only recorded 1,938 deaths from Covid-19 – indicating that 1,158 deaths may have gone uncounted.
The reason for the mismatch was not yet known.
Another factor that could be skewing the numbers is that the MCD counts only the bodies that are brought from hospitals as Covid-19 deaths, while Covid-19 patients who die at home are not being recorded in the official count.
«We put down the cause of death as Covid-19 or a normal death. If the death happened at a hospital, we know if its Covid. When death happened at home, we don’t know for sure, so we always put it as normal,» Anuj Bansal, an employee at Ghazipur crematorium, told NDTV.
Discrepancies between official numbers and actual cremations and deaths are seen across districts and states in India, and the government is increasingly facing charges of undercounting or hiding the real numbers.
Another investigation by news platform Mojo found gaps in Ghaziabad, a city near Delhi in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
«Are all those dying due to Covid-19 even being counted in the official figures? From Delhi to Surat city, the numbers just don’t match,» the Mojo report said.
Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Michigan, believes that the real number of Covid-19 fatalities could be two to five times higher than what is being reported by departments nationwide.