Bihar has registered 251,000 excess deaths under the Civil Registration System (CRS) since the beginning of the COVID19 outbreak in the country. From March 2020 to May 2021. The excess deaths are 48.6 times the official number of confirmed coronavirus deaths which rests at 5,163 in the state in the same time period, Hindustan Times reported.
The data accessed by the newspaper shows that the state’s official Covid-19 death toll till the end of May was 5,163. This means that the CRS data showed that the official Covid-19 death toll had an undercount factor of 48.6 times.
‘Excess deaths’ means the general mortality during a crisis occurring due to all causes and is calculated by the difference between the observed number of deaths during the crisis and the expected number of deaths in the same time period under regular conditions.
However, there are chances that the entirety of excess deaths may not have been due to COVID19 but during a health crisis of this scale and the major deviation in the death numbers are likely to be directly or indirectly caused by the pandemic and the related stress it puts on the state’s healthcare system which in Bihar’s case is the worst in the entire country, the report stated.
In the newspaper’s report, CRS data from the pre-pandemic period (January 2015 to February 2020) was averaged to establish an all-cause mortality baseline following by comparison to the deaths registered from March 2020 onwards.
“That is why we were able to give a revised death figures in June. Yet we have from time-to-time requested to all if there has been death in their family where the cause in death certificate is mentioned as Covid 19, they can get their entry recorded and claim the compensation announced by the state government,” Hindustan Times quoted the Health Minister of Bihar.
CRS is a national system of recording all births and deaths, under the Office of the Registrar General of India where the state government looks over its implementation on the ground.
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