Since the pandemic began in March 2020, there were at least 2,51,000 excess deaths registered under the Civil Registration System (CRS) in Bihar. The number is 48.6 times more than the official number of confirmed coronavirus deaths in the state- 5,163 in the same time period.
The figures from Bihar were accessed by the Hindustan Times, based on deaths registered in the state’s Civil Registration System between January 2015 and May 2021, the present figures, one of the largest deviations in excess mortality seen in such calculations of any state in the country so far.
What is ‘Excess Death’?
Excess death or mortality is a generalised term that refers to the total number of deaths occurring due to all causes during a crisis situation. The number is above and beyond what would have been expected under regular conditions. However, not all such excess deaths were due to Covid-19, but during a pandemic such major deviations in fatalities is likely to be either directly or indirectly caused by the outbreak or due to the overwhelmed health healthcare system.
Reportedly, the CRS data from the pre-pandemic period (January 2015 to February 2020) has been averaged to establish an all-cause mortality baseline, which has then been compared to the deaths registered from March 2020 onwards, resulting in the number of “excess deaths”.
Data like this has given a true toll on the pandemic on human life.
Bihar reported 2,51,053 excess deaths since the start of the outbreak compared to the corresponding four-year period before the pandemic (2015-2019). The state’s official Covid-19 death toll till the end of May was 5,163. This means CRS data showed that the official Covid-19 death toll had an undercount factor of 48.6 times.
In the first five months of 2021, over 1,26,000 such excess deaths were reported against 3,766 reported Covid-19 deaths in the same period – resulting in an undercount factor of 33.7 this year.
CRS is a national system of recording all births and deaths, and during the Covid-19 outbreak, such data calculated from CRS– is being used to count the number of deaths that would not have occurred had the pandemic never happened.
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