New Delhi. India had more deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 than in 2019. This information has been given in an international study. According to the study, there were 11.9 lakh additional deaths in 2020 during the pandemic and this figure is 17 percent more than in 2019.
Others, including researchers from the University of Oxford in Britain, said that this estimate is about eight times more than the official figures of deaths from COVID-19 in India and 1.5 times more than the World Health Organization’s estimate. Meanwhile, reacting to the study, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare issued a statement, calling the study’s estimates misleading.
According to the study authors, using data from more than 7.65 lakh individuals, the study estimated the change in life expectancy at birth by gender and social group in India between 2019 and 2020. According to the study, India is a country where one-third of the additional deaths due to the global pandemic have occurred.
This data is taken from the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5). The authors said that life expectancy of women has decreased by 3.1 years, while it has decreased by 2.1 years in men. In the study published in the journal ‘Science Advances’, the authors said that these patterns are in contrast to the patterns observed in high-income countries, where more deaths occurred among men than women during the pandemic.
