India coronavirus deaths: Continuous cremations cast doubt on Covid’s death toll

“We work 24 hours a day with 100% capacity to cremate bodies on time,” Kamlesh Sailor, the president of the trust that runs the Gujarat crematorium in the diamond polish city of Surat, told Reuters.

As hospitals are full and there is a shortage of oxygen and medicine in an already cracked health system, several large cities report far greater number of cremations and burials under coronavirus protocols than official Covid-19 death toll, according to crematorium and cemetery workers, media and a review of government data.

India on Monday recorded a record 273,810 new daily infections and 1,619 deaths. The total number of cases now stands at more than 15 million, the second next to the United States.

Reliable data is at the heart of any government response to the pandemic, without which planning for hospital vacancies, oxygen and medicine will become difficult, experts say.

Government officials say the difference in death rates could be caused by several factors, including excessive caution.

A senior state health official said the increase in the number of cremations was due to bodies cremated by Covid protocols, even though the person is likely to be positive by 0.1%.

“In many cases, patients come to the hospital in an extremely critical condition and die before being tested. There are cases where patients are brought to the hospital dead, and we do not know if they are positive or not,” the official said. .

‘Denial of data’

But Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Michigan, said many parts of India were in ‘data denial’.

“Everything is so muddy,” she said. “It feels like no one understands the situation very clearly, and it’s very troublesome.”

In Surat, the second largest city in Gujarat, Sailor’s Kurukshetra crematorium and a second crematorium known as Umra cremated more than 100 bodies a day under Covid protocols over the past week – well above the city’s official daily death toll of about 25 , according to interviews with workers.

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Prashant Kabrawala, trustee of Narayan Trust, which runs a third city crematorium called Ashwinikumar, did not want to receive the number of bodies received under Covid protocols, but said the cremations there had tripled in recent weeks.

“I have been going to the crematorium regularly since 1987 and have been involved in its day-to-day functioning since 2005, but I have not seen so many dead bodies that would be cremated in all those years, even during an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1994. and floods in 2006, Kabrawala said.

Government spokesmen in Gujarat did not respond to a request for comment.

India is not the only country questioning its coronavirus statistics. But the testimony of workers and a growing body of academic literature suggest that deaths in India are underreported compared to other countries.

Mukherjee’s investigation into India’s first wave concludes that there were 11 times more infections than reported, according to estimates from studies in other countries. There were also between two and five times as many deaths as reported, far more than the world average.

Work day and night

In Lucknow, capital of the populous northern state of Uttar Pradesh, data from Covid’s largest crematorium, Baikunthdham, shows the double number of corpses arriving on six different days in April, as government data on Covid’s deaths for the entire city .

The figures do not take into account a second Covid crematorium in the city, or funerals in the Muslim community that make up a quarter of the city’s population.

Azad, head of the crematorium, which mentions only one name, said the number of cremations under Covid protocols has increased fivefold in recent weeks.

“We work day and night,” he said. “The incinerators work full time, but still many people with the corpses have to wait for the last rituals.”

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A Uttar Pradesh government spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Elsewhere, the local news agency India Today reported two crematoria in Bhopal, the capital of the central state of Madhya Pradesh. 187 bodies were cremated in four days this month according to Covid protocols, while the official death toll from Covid stood at five.

Last week, Sandesh, a Gujarati newspaper, counted 63 bodies that left a single Covid hospital for burial in the state’s largest city, Ahmedabad, on a day when government data showed 20 coronavirus deaths.

The medical journal Lancet noted last year that four Indian countries that account for 65% of Covid deaths each registered 100% of their deaths in the coronavirus.

But less than a quarter of deaths in India are medically certified, especially in rural areas, meaning the true Covid mortality rate in many of India’s 24 other states may never be known.

“Most deaths are unregistered, so it is impossible to do a validity calculation,” Mukherjee said.

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