Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 27

The pandemic continued to ravage the nation with deaths nearing 2-lakh mark and crematoriums failing to cope with the rush for last rites of victims.

In Delhi, makeshift crematoriums came up at some places, forcing experts to question the Covid data. They sought transparency in reporting lest future pandemic response gets compromised.

Leading virologist Shahid Jameel alleged: “We are not counting the Covid deaths properly. India sees roughly 28,000 deaths a day. The reported number of pandemic deaths is between 2,300-2,800 per day, barely 10 per cent of the normal. If that is the case, burial and cremation grounds can’t get overwhelmed.” The top virologist, actively involved in the genome sequencing of SARS-Cov2 samples, however, said under-reporting of Covid deaths in India was not a case of devious design to fudge data, but a system’s issue. “The reason for under-reporting is simple. A cousin passed away last week due to Covid. He was tested on April 13 and his test results had still not come out. His death was not counted as Covid death,” Jameel said, flagging potential loss of Covid deaths taking place at homes.

Health economist Ramanan Laxminarayanan, who found himself at the centre of a social media storm last year after he made massive Covid disease projections for India, said that countries honest with data reporting do better in disease control.