Comparison of India’s Covid-19 deaths per million with other South Asian countries may not be apt: Govt

Coronavirus deaths in India: India has reported a higher number of deaths per million population due to coronavirus than other countries in the South Asian region, including Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Several factors could have contributed to such a situation, the Centre said on Tuesday. Union Minister of State for Health Ashwini Kumar Choubey in the Rajya Sabha said that comparing deaths per million among different countries would not be apt due to factors like case definitions, testing, reporting protocols, island nation, surveillance as well as varied geography, according to a report by news agency PTI.

He was asked in the Upper House if it was a fact that the deaths per million related to coronavirus were more in India than other countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, he said yes, and then went on to explain why he felt that such a comparison might not be apt.

However, he added that when the countries with a higher number of COVID-19 cases are looked at and their data is analysed, it can be found that the number of deaths per million population in India among the lowest.

While the number of COVID-19 deaths per million population in India is 112, this figure for the US, which has the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world, stands at 1,347, and 1,533 for the UK. Apart from that, Spain has reported 1,247 deaths per million population, while Brazil has reported 1,044 deaths per million. Meanwhile, Russia has recorded 495 deaths per million population due to coronavirus.

In actual numbers, India has recorded over 1.54 lakh deaths due to coronavirus so far. This figure is high due to the high number of population and cases. Still, the number of COVID-19 deaths recorded in the country stands at 1.43% of the total number of cases that India has recorded so far.