According to Union health ministry data, provided on Tuesday morning, 5,23,889 people have lost their lives to the virus in the country since early 2020.
Registered births, the data said, decreased from 2.48 crore in 2019 to 2.42 crore in 2020, a drop of about 2.4 per cent
In the case of registered births, there has been a fall in 2020 in almost all states and UTs except Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh compared to 2019
New Delhi:
As many as 81.2 lakh people died in India in 2020, an increase of 6.2 per cent than 2019 when the country had registered 76.4 lakh deaths, according to data prepared by the Registrar General of India (RGI).
In 2020, when COVID-19 was first reported in the country, 1.48 lakh people lost their lives due to the pandemic, which is substantially lower than 2021 when 3.32 lakh people died due to the disease.
According to Union health ministry data, provided on Tuesday morning, 5,23,889 people have lost their lives to the virus in the country since early 2020.
In case of registered deaths, the number of registered events has gone up from 76.4 lakhs in 2019 to 81.2 lakhs in 2020, an increase of 6.2 per cent, the RGI’s report ‘Vital Statistics of India based on the Civil Registration System’ for 2020 said.
Some states and union territories (UTs) namely Maharashtra, Bihar, Gujarat, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Assam, and Haryana have contributed significantly in the increased number of deaths registered from 2019 to 2020.
Officials said many of the deaths had occurred in these states due to COVID-19.
Some experts estimate India’s actual COVID death toll is as high as 4 million, about eight times the official figure, especially as a record wave driven by the Delta variant killed many people in April and May of last year.
The WHO’s estimate will be published on Thursday.
Vinod Kumar Paul, a top health official who has overseen India’s fight against the pandemic, said there was nothing “dramatic” in the total death data for 2020 and that those were “absolute, correct and counted numbers”.
He said the data showing 8.1 million total deaths in India in 2020 was released by the Office of the Registrar General two to three months in advance because of the attention on the country’s COVID toll.
“There is a public narrative in the media, based on various modelling estimates, that India’s COVID-19 deaths are many times the reported figure – that’s not the case in reality,” he told state TV.
“We now have actual data for 2020, there is no need to do any modelling now. We will have actual, robust data for 2021 too. Modelling can lead to overestimation, absurd estimation.”
Countries around the world reported only 1.83 million COVID-19 deaths in 2020 but the WHO estimates excess mortality of at least 3 million globally for that year.
India has said it does not agree with the WHO’s methodology, though the scientists working on the latest estimates have defended it.
Registered births, the data said, decreased from 2.48 crore in 2019 to 2.42 crore in 2020, a drop of about 2.4 per cent.
In the case of registered births, there has been a fall in 2020 in almost all states and UTs except Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh compared to 2019.
Eleven States and UTs namely Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Delhi, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Kerala and West Bengal have contributed significantly to the decrease in registered births in 2020 over 2019.
As many as 11 states and UTs have achieved more than 90 per cent registration of death within the prescribed time limit of 21 days.