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Murad Banaji Profile picture
@muradbanaji
Jul 18, 2020 • 30 tweets • 11 min read • Read on X
Some news reports on COVID-19 death undercounting in India... 1/

West Bengal: 50% of deaths (late March to April) were omitted on account of comorbidities before a "reconciliation" in early May. (Modelling suggests undercounting continued after this.)
hindustantimes.com/india-news/cov…
Delhi. Many deaths went "missing" between mid-April and mid-May. Some were added back over the next month. (Modelling suggests at least 3/4 of deaths were missing at the worst point, and the reconciliation was probably incomplete.) thewire.in/government/del…
Tamil Nadu. Only about half of the COVID-19 deaths recorded by the Greater Chennai Corporation had made it to the state register by early June (scroll.in/latest/964371/…). More have since been going missing from the official count. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/2…).
Maharashtra added 1328 "backlog" fatalities on June 16th, 862 in Mumbai alone. Mumbai in particular added a total of about 1750 old deaths over 3 weeks starting June 10th. (Modelling suggests that the reconciliation was still very incomplete.)
thehindu.com/news/national/…
Mumbai – this piece details a number of suspected and confirmed COVID-19 patients who died and whose names did not make it into the official figures *even after the June 16th data reconciliation*.
indianexpress.com/article/cities…
Madhya Pradesh. A big mismatch between crematorium and graveyard data, and MP govt's COVID-19 death data for Bhopal (late June). About half of all deaths missing.
newsclick.in/COVID-19-Madhy…
Gujarat (Vadodara): Dead co-morbid patients considered 'discharged'. Although the report is about Vadodara, the problem of omitting deaths of patients with comorbidities seems to be state policy.
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/vadodara/…
Telangana. Hospital and mortuary workers – mostly poorly paid and vulnerable contract workers – describe a major mismatch between the deaths they are seeing and the state’s official toll.
deccanchronicle.com/nation/current…
Gujarat (Surat, 15/07). “Claims made by NGO that helps SMC conduct last rites of deceased Covid patients, crematorium managers, councillor suggest that deaths are higher than the official figures; authority claims comorbid cases not counted as Covid ones”
ahmedabadmirror.indiatimes.com/ahmedabad/othe…
Delhi (again). 18/07. A smaller mismatch now, but still there.
theprint.in/health/covid-d…
Telangana. 16/07. Suspected COVID patients die while waiting for test results. Many probably don't make it into the statistics.
deccanchronicle.com/nation/current…
MP - Indore: 50 COVID19 deaths from April added into the tally in July.
epapers.peoplessamachar.in/epaper/m/36512…
Tamil Nadu adds 444 “reconciled” deaths.
newindianexpress.com/states/tamil-n…
Telangana: "...the deaths are registered as co-morbid condition. Only if the person dies due to breathing problem and is infected with the virus, the audit committee registers it as Covid-19 death..."
dailypioneer.com/uploads/2020/e…
Madhya Pradesh (also Gujarat, Telangana and several other states). @PriyankaPulla's detailed piece on *how* #COVID19 deaths go missing from official statistics in India.
science.thewire.in/health/india-m…
Telangana, again. "Suspected, non-tested and negative report-based deaths are not being registered by the government as there is no proof of the COVID-19 test results and families are unwilling to have the name of the disease on the death certificate."
deccanchronicle.com/nation/current…
Ghaziabad (UP): August 21. A mismatch between official #COVID19 fatality figures and crematorium records. timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ghaziabad…
Rajkot (Gujarat). A mismatch between hospital data and official #COVID19 deaths.
Assam:
Rajkot (Gujarat) again. The scale of the mismatch is astonishing: 94 deaths according to the municipal council, 1247 bodies according to burial and crematorium records.
theprint.in/india/rajkot-s…
Odisha: "...going by reports, there is a huge mismatch between the State’s total death toll and deaths being reported from districts."
thehindu.com/news/national/…
Delhi - municipal data 16% higher than the govt bulletin: "The data with the three municipal bodies pegs Delhi's death toll at 6,437 as of 5 October. The Delhi government health bulletin, however, puts the death toll at 5,542 deaths on the same day."
theprint.in/health/differe…
A couple more for this thread...

Gujarat: as Ahmedabad saw a surge in cases in November 2020, a familiar story; the official death toll did not match the reality at crematoria.
thewire.in/government/ahm…
Kerala: systematic undercounting of COVID deaths picked up by volunteers tracking local newspapers and news channels.


By November 2020, the tally of COVID deaths tracked in this way was 70% higher than the official tally.
bbc.com/news/world-asi…
Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): the city had just 13 recorded COVID deaths from 1-30 March. But there were 18 COVID funerals on March 30 alone. The article has a table implying 90 COVID funerals upto 30/03. The text mentions 132 funerals during March.
bhaskar.com/local/mp/bhopa…
Bharuch district, Gujarat. 545 bodies cremated so far according to COVID protocols in a special COVID cemetery. But the official count of COVID deaths is just 33.
Gujarat again (Ahmedabad). The numbers are shocking.
Gujarat: Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Rajkot. Relentless dishonesty from the state government, but thankfully an active media with reporters on the ground going to hospitals and crematoria.
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/vadodara/…
UP: "The cumulative official Covid death count released by the government in the last seven days is 124. However... over 400 people who died because of the virus had been cremated during the same period."
ndtv.com/india-news/utt…
Madhya Pradesh (Bhopal). On Thursday April 15, Bhopal saw 112 COVID protocol funerals. According to government figures there were 4 COVID deaths that day. During the previous 5 days: 356 COVID funerals. According to government figures: 21 deaths.

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More from @muradbanaji

Murad Banaji Profile picture
May 12, 2022
My piece with @aashishg_ in The Hindu on India's pandemic deaths. The @WHO has now released its estimate of a staggering 4.7M excess deaths in India. Is this plausible? And how has the government responded? I want to focus on one bizarre claim, key to the govt response... (1/n)
In its strident rebuttal of the WHO estimates, the government claimed that 99.9% of deaths were registered in India in 2020. There are made-up statistics which are plausible, and others which are laughable. This one is laughable. Let's see an example of how absurd it is...
Every year, according to government estimates, UP sees about 15 lakh deaths (pre-pandemic). In 2020, 8.7 lakh deaths were registered. That's 6 lakh missing deaths in UP. Another 2 lakh missing deaths in Bihar. The list goes on. Did people just stop dying in these states in 2020?
Read 10 tweets
Murad Banaji Profile picture
Jan 19, 2022
This is not surprising news. But let's remember some points. #thread
1) Excess deaths over the pandemic period likely number 3 to 5 million in India, or 6 to 11 times the official COVID-19 toll. This is now established in *multiple, independent* studies.
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/gujarat-…
2) Most, but not necessarily all, of India's 3-5M excess deaths are likely COVID deaths.
3) There is huge variation between states/territories in what fraction of their pandemic deaths they recorded. We don't yet fully know why.
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
4) Active dishonesty and data manipulation played a big part, especially in some states like Gujarat where it has been well documented by local media.
5) BUT: apart from dishonesty, there are also structural and policy factors: weak or unfocussed testing, lack of hospital care...
Read 6 tweets
Murad Banaji Profile picture
Jan 7, 2022
Mumbai COVID update. For two days Mumbai's cases have been at around 20K per day, almost double the previous record. But: there has been increased testing, and a large % of tests are PCR tests. Even so, Mumbai's infection levels are probably at an all-time high. (1/5) ImageImage
Are the cases from the slums? Wardwise data suggests most are from non-slum areas. My estimate from the data: 15-20% of cases were from the slums in the last week. This in no way implies lower infection rates in the slums - we know detection in the slums is *much* weaker. (2/5)
Hospitalisations are at about 20-30% of previous peak values. This is a worrying level. Cases this week have been around 6 times the number last week. If hospitalisations follow this pattern, there could be a real danger of the city running short of beds. (3/5) Image
Read 5 tweets
Murad Banaji Profile picture
Jan 3, 2022
There is no doubt that India will soon face a huge flood of Omicron infections - including many reinfections and many amongst vaccinated people. A short thread on what to expect. (In brief: too early to be sure!)

Let's start with Mumbai which is ahead of the curve. (1/10)
This is how Mumbai's latest COVID surge is looking so far. *Much* sharper rises in cases and test positivity than last time. Daily cases doubling every 2-2.5 days. The previous peak in daily cases is likely to be passed soon, even though testing is hardly increasing. (2/10)
Hospitalisations are also starting to rise. But the city has decent levels of vaccination and high levels of previous infection. And the evidence is now fair that Omicron causes less severe disease than Delta. Hopefully, hospitalisations will not reach previous levels. (3/10)
Read 10 tweets
Murad Banaji Profile picture
Oct 17, 2021
A recent IIT Kanpur report congratulated the Uttar Pradesh government for its handling of the COVID crisis. The report is deeply flawed but, in particular, it doesn't seem to ask the key question: what was the scale of pandemic mortality in UP? (1/n)
There is some limited civil registration data for UP upto April 2021, obtained via RTI by @OfficialSauravD (data linked below). This monthly data - from Jan '19 to April '21 - has many anomalies. 2019 totals for many districts do not match CRS report data.
github.com/muradbanaji/In…
Why such low quality data from UP's chief registrar? Administrative weaknesses? Incompetence? In this twitter conversation the IITK report's author suggests CRS data indicates low excess mortality during 2020. He is, presumably, referring to this data.
Read 13 tweets
Murad Banaji Profile picture
Oct 6, 2021
Thoughts on #COVID19 in Mumbai. In the last month things have been stable:
daily cases: 400-500
official daily deaths: 4-5
R: around 1
test positivity: 1-1.5%
bed occupancy steady at the level of Jan-Feb.

Is this what "endemicity" looks like? (Let's come back to that.) (1/n) ImageImage
The great majority of people in the city have been either vaccinated or infected or both. There's a high level of population immunity in the city. More than 85% of both slum and nonslum-dwellers have COVID-19 antibodies. (80% of unvaccinated people.)
indianexpress.com/article/cities…
In an estimated population of 13M (including children), there have been 8.3M first doses and 4.3M second doses. ~90% of adults are at least singly vaccinated, and almost 50% fully vaccinated. For many people vaccination came after infection, giving stronger protection.
Read 9 tweets

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