According to the civil registration department, almost 4.75 lakh all-cause deaths were reported in comparison to the first year of the pandemic. In 2020, a total of 81.2 lakh deaths were recorded with a rise of 6% from the year 2019 with a total reported death toll of 76.4 lakh.

NITI Aayog member VK Paul stated that in the total attribute deaths, we have to be mindful of the excess mortality rate in all-cause death enveloped in the reported data. He also stated that the excess registration can also be caused due to citizen awareness and ease of registration indicating that there was no significant surge in mortality due to infection during 2020.

The CRS data for 2020, came at the heel of various international regulatory agencies doing modeling studies to estimate the additional number of fatalities. Recently, the center and WHO disagreed on the modeling methodology, as different sets of datasets were applied to the different countries with varied population sizes and geographical demography. As per the data, only 11 states and UTs such as Punjab, Chandigarh, Mizoram, Haryana, West Bengal, Andaman and Nicobar, Puducherry, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nādu, Andhra Pradesh, and Gujarat have registered more than 90% of all the deaths. Also, the urban area recorded more death numbers than the rural area in 2020 with infant mortality rates recorded at 23.4% and 76.6% respectively.

Source: The Times of India