The estimate is about 8 times higher than the official COVID-19 death toll in India, and 1. 5 times higher than World Health Organization estimates, researchers said, adding those from the University of Oxford, UK. .
Using data from more than 7. 65 lakh people, estimated adjustments in life expectancy at birth, across sex and social organization between 2019 and 2020 in India, a country where a third of excess deaths similar to the global pandemic are thought to have occurred, according to the Array authors.
Data comes from the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5).
According to the authors, life expectancy decreased by 3. 1 years, while for men it decreased by 2. 1 years.
Gender inequities in fitness care and the distribution of resources within families may be conceivable reasons, they said.
These trends contrast with those seen in high-income countries, where excess mortality was higher among men than women during the pandemic, the authors said in the study published in the journal Science Advances.
Looking at social teams, the researchers found that high-caste Hindu teams experienced a decrease in their life expectancy of 1. 3 years, while Muslims and Scheduled Tribes experienced a decrease in their life expectancy of 5. 4 years and 4. 1 years.
According to the authors, the pandemic has exacerbated the disparities already faced by those castes and marginalized groups in terms of life expectancy.
“Marginalized groups already had a lower life expectancy, and the pandemic has further widened the gap between the most privileged Indian social groups and the most marginalized social groups in India,” said Aashish Gupta, a researcher at the University of Oxford.
Furthermore, the researchers found that deaths in India were increasing in all age groups, especially among the youngest and oldest, while the decline in life expectancy in high-income countries was largely due part to an increase in deaths among other people over 60 years of age. and more.
The excess mortality among younger people can be explained simply by the fact that young people in some regions are more vulnerable to COVID-19 infection, they said.
According to the authors, the indirect effects of the pandemic and lockdowns, coupled with economic deterioration and disruptions to public fitness services, have also contributed to excess mortality in younger age groups.
“Using data unique to the Demographic and Health Survey, our study highlights the importance of focusing on inequalities when measuring mortality and shows that pandemics can worsen, rather than equalize, existing disparities,” said Ridhi Kashyap, professor of demography and computational social sciences. University of Oxford.
“This is visual in the role that COVID-19 played in exacerbating the effects of gender disparities in physical fitness before the pandemic,” Kashyap said.
Reacting to the study, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare issued a statement calling the study’s estimates “rude and misleading. “
The study’s “untenable and unacceptable” conclusions are based on a “critically flawed” approach, which maximally takes the mortality observed in a subset of surveyed families as a component of the NFHS and extrapolates the findings nationwide. According to the statement. .
“The NFHS pattern is only representative of the country as a whole. 23% of the families included in this research from a part of 14 states cannot be representative of the country,” he said.
The study takes into account India’s “robust” civil registration system (CRS), which saw a very significant increase in death registrations (more than 99%) in 2020, up from 92% in 2019, due to the pandemic alone, according to the statement. Addendum.