India officially had crossed more than 1 crore laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19 by the end of 2020. This is almost twice as many as cases of tuberculosis, typhoid, malaria and pneumonia in 2018 assembled together, as per the government data.

There were more coronavirus infections in India in 2020 as compared to most other communicable diseases in a normal given year, according to the analysis of the Global Burden of Disease estimates. Even though India had a lower COVID-19 mortality rate, however, deaths from the disease in India overshadowed those from other infectious diseases. According to the two-government national sero-surveys, the exact number of infections along with asymptomatic cases was very high. The results of a third national sero-survey are currently ongoing, but a small increase in sero-prevalence is expected thatwill make the number of estimated COVID-19 infections by the end of 2020 in the range of more than 7.5 crore at the lowest estimate.

There are several city-level sero-surveys conducted in which investigators have tested a sample population for the occurrence of antibodies against COVID-19 in their blood. The only countrywide sero-survey conducted is by the Indian Council of Medical Research. The first round was conducted in 70 districts and projected 64 lakh infections in May-June, 2020. In the second round that was conducted in August, the estimate was almost 7.4 crore.

India collects its official statistics on incidence and mortality rates of different diseases in the National Health Profile, which is published by the Central Bureau of Health Intelligence’s health ministry.

The government is also aware that the officially stated numbers represented will be an under-estimate, attributing to public sector versus private sector reporting issues.

The Global Burden of Disease is a huge global collaboration that is led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, United States. It has been using several sources to estimate the exact burden of disease and death in 195 countries, from the year 1990 onwards.

In India, the Global Burden of Disease project associates with the Public Health Foundation of India to create national and state level estimates of disease and death. Their data aims to take into account the unreported and asymptomatic infections for all diseases.

An evaluation between officially documented data from the and Global Burden of Disease and National Health Profile estimates demonstrates under-counting for both recorded infections of and deaths from numerous diseases.

Ischemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cancers are the three top most killers of Indians, but for the analysis, infectious diseases were only considered. Between the communicable diseases, the broad categories of “acute respiratory infections” and “acute diarrhoeal disease” reported for the major share of ‘morbidity’ or infection in India in 2018, as per the National Health Profile 2019. The precise diseases such as typhoid, pneumonia, tuberculosis and malaria followed. These numbers showed that nearly twice as many reported cases of SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) in 2020 were reported as compared to typhoid, malaria, tuberculosis and pneumonia in 2018 collected together.

There were approximately five times more cases of coronavirus infection in 2020 were reported as compared to tuberculosis cases in 2018. Thus, the official number of deaths from coronavirus in 2020 has overshadowed the number of deaths from other infectious diseases in 2018. Though, these are under-estimates of the exact number of infections and of deaths.

Source: Scroll.in