GOI’s wrong decisions during the second wave of Covid killed 50 lakh people, alleges Rahul Gandhi

Rahul Gandhi tweeted a new research from the Centre for Global Development on his Twitter account, which provided excess death projections from three distinct data sources

Rahul Gandhi, the Congress leader, said on Wednesday that around 50 lakh Indians perished during the second wave of Covid infection as a result of the Union government’s “wrong decisions”.

Rahul Gandhi tweeted new research from the Centre for Global Development on his Twitter account, which provided excess death projections from three distinct data sources from the beginning of the pandemic until June 2021.

“The Truth. GOI’s wrong decisions during Covid second wave killed 50 lakh of our sisters, brothers, mothers, and fathers,” the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi tweeted.

The Working Paper, titled “Three New Estimates of India’s All-Cause Excess Mortality during the COVID-19 Pandemic” said that India lacks an authoritative estimate of the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We report excess mortality estimates from three different data sources from the pandemics to start through June 2021. First, extrapolation of state-level civil registration from seven states suggests 3.4 million excess deaths. Second, applying international estimates of age-specific infection fatality rates (IFR) to Indian seroprevalence data implies a higher toll of around 4 million. Third, our analysis of the Consumer Pyramid Household Survey, a longitudinal panel of over 800,000 individuals across all states, yields an estimate of 4.9 million excess deaths,” it said.

According to the study, “Each of these estimates has shortcomings and they also diverge in the pattern of deaths between the two waves of the pandemic.”

Estimating COVID-deaths with statistical confidence may prove elusive, as per the researchers. “But all estimates suggest that the death toll from the pandemic is likely to be an order of magnitude greater than the official count of 400,000; they also suggest that the first wave was more lethal than is believed.”

“Understanding and engaging with the data-based estimates is necessary because in this horrific tragedy the counting—and the attendant accountability—will count for now but also the future,” the study said.

Pertinently, India has officially reported around 4.18 lakh Covid fatalities.