“My 69-year-old uncle died on april 22 in Varanasi’s ESIC Hospital,” said Gaurav Srivastava, a 30-year-old resident of Varanasi. “He had tested positive for Covid-19 10 days before that. The documents the hospital gave us mentioned that he died of a cardiac arrest and not Covid-19. Even if it was cardiac arrest, it was induced by Covid-19 as he had no history of heart-related ailments. And yet he was cremated in a crematorium set aside for Covid-19 deaths,” he added.
Srivastava was witness to one among maybe lakhs of such cases where death certificates of Covid-19 patients do not have the virus as the cause of death. Such deaths are then not recorded in the numbers the state or the Centre are releasing.
For over a year, indian journalists and researchers have been attempting to answer one simple question: what is the real Covid-19 toll in India? There are three possible sources of “missed” Covid-19 deaths. One, the deaths of Covid positive people could be recorded as non-Covid deaths. Two, the deaths of Covid positive people who are never tested may not be recorded as Covid deaths. Three, the deaths of Covid positive people could be intentionally suppressed to keep counts low.
