How Is Number Of COVID-19 Related Deaths Calculated In India? Find Out

CoronavirusIndia
By OB Bureau
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There is a lot of ambiguity around the manner in which the number of Coronavirus (COVID-19) related deaths is being calculated in India.

Data matching

The numbers that are reported are actually a result of a massive data matching exercise, which reveal large numbers of deaths that have remained unreported so far, reported The Indian Express (TNIE). For example, more than 2,000 Coronavirus related deaths were reported on Tuesday, almost five times the number reported on the previous day. All these deaths did not happen in the last two days. These are actually a result of data matching exercise.

Researchers from Mumbai and Thiruvananthapuram have argued that the commonly-used method for calculating the death rate does not truly represent the actual situation and that the real mortality due to COVID19 disease could be much higher.

Case Fatality Ratio (CFR)

The death rate, also referred to as case fatality ratio (CFR), is calculated by dividing the total number of deaths with the total number of infections, and expressed as a percentage. For example, India’s CFR on Monday, with 9990 deaths and 3.43 lakh cases, can be calculated to be 2.91 percent.

The researchers are from International Institute of Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, a deemed university and autonomous organisation under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and Thiruvananthapurm-based Centre for Development Studies (CDS), a research centre backed by Kerala government and Indian Council of Social Science Research. Their study is available for review now, reported TNIE.

Time lag of 14 days

According to researchers, the deaths happening today are of people who got infected a few days earlier. Also, even if the infections suddenly stopped today, deaths would continue to happen for the next few days. These would be of the people who are already infected or are in hospitals. The denominator to be used in calculating the CFR should not be current caseload, but an earlier caseload with an internationally accepted time lag of 14 days, say researchers.

“The CFR is illusive in that the same with 14 days delay for India is at least two times higher,” Sanjay Mohanty, Professor at the Department of Fertility Studies at IIPS Mumbai was quoted as saying in TNIE. He also pointed to a study in The Lancet journal which had used the same method in March to calculate the CFRs of different countries.

Current CFR is erroneous, why?

There is a completely different reason for this. CFR is defined by scientists and epidemiologists as the ratio of deaths to the total number of infections, not just the infections that have been reported, after being detected through testing. A large number of infected people are believed to be asymptomatic, and not everyone is being tested, the actual number of infections is an elusive number, particularly when the disease is still spreading.

Once the epidemic is over, scientists will have methods to reach a reliable estimate of the actual infections. In such a scenario, using only the detected positive cases to calculate the CFR can lead to a big over-estimate of mortality due to the disease. Scientists expect that the real CFR, once the epidemic is over, would be well below one per cent, reported TNIE.

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OB Bureau
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