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.
