Adjusting Reported COVID-19 Deaths for the Prevailing Routine Death Surveillance in India.

ABSTRACT: In India, the "low mortality" narrative based on the reported COVID-19 deaths may be causing more harm than benefit. The extent to which COVID-19 deaths get reported depends on the coverage of routine death surveillance [death registration along with medical certification of cause of death (MCCD)] and the errors in MCCD. In India, the coverage of routine death surveillance is 18.1%. This is compounded by the fact that COVID-19 death reporting is focused among reported cases and the case detection ratio is low. To adjust for the coverage of routine death surveillance and errors in MCCD, we calculated a correction (multiplication) factor at national and state level to produce an estimated number of COVID-19 deaths. As on July 31, 2020, we calculated the infection fatality ratio (IFR) for Ind

SUBMITTER: Shewade HD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8374621 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature