Nearly one out of every five deaths that added to the national death toll in the last 30 days was a fatality that occurred days ago and went unreported. At least six states – Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Goa, Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh – have been steadily reconciling their death data over the last month, adding a total of 20,741 fatalities not previously logged.
On June 9, three out of every four deaths in Bihar in the previous month were added to the state’s tally in just one day. More than half of the deaths reported in Maharashtra in the last 30 days were old backlog statistics. This proportion was 30 percent in Uttarakhand.
Not only has this statistical correction increased the country’s death toll in the last month, but it also suggests that the fatalities reported during the peak of the outbreak in India in April and May were under-reported.
On Saturday, for example, a total of 3,302 deaths were recorded in the country. However, only 1,316 people died on that particular day.
The remaining 1,986 deaths were old deaths due to the disease that were added to state totals – Maharashtra had 1,966 deaths, Punjab had nine, and Uttar Pradesh had eleven. This means that 40% of all new deaths occurred within the previous seven days.
Similarly, 4,000 deaths were added to the country’s tally on Friday. However, Maharashtra added 2,213 deaths to its backlog on that day, Uttarakhand added 10 old fatalities, and Uttar Pradesh added four. This means that 56 percent of the population was over the age of 65. This was 45 percent of the 3,410 deaths reported on Thursday – 1,522 in Maharashtra, one in Goa, 14 in Uttarakhand, three in Punjab, and one in Uttar Pradesh.
According to HT’s dashboard, this reconciliation reached a pinnacle on Wednesday, when the national death toll reached a new high of 6,141. Old deaths accounted for 71% of the total, with the majority (3,951) resulting from Bihar’s reconciliation. Maharashtra (400) and Uttarakhand (300) were also significant contributors (30).
Over the last month, the reconciliation process has been a near-daily occurrence in Maharashtra and Uttarakhand. In the last month, the western state has updated its tally 25 times, while the hill state has done so 27 times.
In terms of absolute numbers, Maharashtra has added 15,756 old deaths to its tally in the last month, accounting for 53.5 percent of the state’s total fatalities. In the same time period, 807 people died in Uttarakhand, accounting for 30.1 percent of the state’s fatalities.
In Punjab, the process is a little more complicated because, while reconciliation occurs on a daily basis, the state also reduces the number of repeat deaths on a regular basis. In the last month, UP has added at least 78 old deaths to its tally, similar to Punjab, which has been updating its case as well as death count. Between June 7 and June 10, Goa only did so four times, resulting in a total of 75 deaths (7.7 percent of fatalities in the past month).
