Mathematician Murad Banaji By analyzing total excess deaths – i.e., the difference between total deaths in Mumbai one year, compared with the year before — he estimates that the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 would have to have been undercounted by at least two-thirds to account for the higher 2020 death tally.. "My optimistic estimate then was that for every death [from COVID-19] that was recorded during the year [2020], two more were missed."
Those calculations are based on data from Mumbai, India's richest major city, where access to health care is better than elsewhere. So the number of undercounted deaths could be even higher in less well-off parts of the country .
“Not all those excess deaths may have been from Covid-19,” explained Banaji. “But from what we can gather from international data and studies, most probably were, and in Mumbai’s’s case, my estimate is a minimum of 60% to 70% of those additional excess deaths were from Covid.”... However, Banaji emphasised that for rural and impoverished areas of India, in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which have limited health infrastructure, death recording and Covid testing, the number of unreported Covid deaths was “likely to be huge, much greater than in a city such as Mumbai”.
“If we don’t have the data to fully understand what’s happening with this pandemic now,” said Banaji, “how can India possibly prepare for the future?”