6.5 lakh death registrations in 2022, decline to normal range after 2021 Covid peak: CRS data

The death registration data is now available for all the three years of the pandemic, and the numbers clearly show that the official count of deaths caused by Covid-19 was a severe under-reporting of the actual situation. According to the official count, about 5.3 lakh people died due to Covid-19 in India in the three-year period of 2020 to 2022.

The CRS data for these years shows that the actual number could be anywhere between 20 lakh and 25 lakh, or may be a little more, about four to five times the official count. However, in the absence of information about the proportion of deaths getting registered, a more realistic estimate of the deaths caused by Covid19 still remains elusive.

But it is also clear now that estimates of several research studies, which had been putting India’s Covid-19 death count in the range of five to six million, or even higher, were grossly exaggerated.

The CRS-2022 also shows a reversal of trends in birth registrations. The years 2020 and 2021 had seen a drop in registrations of births compared to 2019, the year before the pandemic. In 2019, 2.48 crore births were registered in the country, but this number dropped to about 2.42 crore in 2020 and 2021. In the year 2022, more than 2.54 crore births were registered, the maximum ever. The 86.5 lakh deaths registered in 2022 is also the highest number of registration for deaths ever, apart from 2021. Past data from 2007 to 2019 shows that about 83.5 lakh people die in India every year, on an average. The estimate for actual number of deaths during these years has varied from 81.17 lakh in 2017 to 85.89 lakh in 2012. During these years, the proportion of deaths getting registered increased from 69% to 92%. If it is considered that the registered deaths in India now closely approximate the actual number of deaths, then the 86.5 lakh deaths for 2022 does not appear to be a major deviation from the normal range. It could fall just outside the upper bound of the range seen in data from 2007 to 2019. This is very unlike the data for 2021, when 1.02 crore deaths were registered, and clearly reflected the impact of the second wave of the pandemic in the middle of 2021.

A separate set of data, about the medical cause of deaths, released simultaneously, shows that 25,393 deaths in 2022 were attributed to Covid-19. For 2021, this number was 4,13,580.

But barely a quarter of the registered deaths in India get a medical certification.