New data shows nearly 75,000 people in Bihar died of unexplained causes in the first five months of 2021, which coincided with the deadly Covid second wave. This is almost 10 times the state’s official pandemic death figure.
According to Bihar’s Civil Registration System, nearly 1.3 lakh deaths were reported in Bihar in January-May 2019. The figure for the same period in 2021 is 2.2 lakhs, showing an increase of nearly 82,500. More than Half of this 62 per cent increase was reported in the month of May alone.
But, Bihar’s official Covid death toll figure for January-May 2021 was only 7,717. This is the corrected figure after the state added 3,951 earlier this month. Still this overall number of Official Covid deaths in the state is only a fraction of excess deaths recorded by its Civil Registration System.
The difference of 74,808 raising a key question: Is the state under-counting its Covid deaths? Even without Covid, Bihar has historically had a poor record of registering deaths.
Similar trends of under-counting were seen in Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Delhi. Data analysed by NDTV earlier had shown there were 4.8 lakh unexplained excess deaths in these five states alone.
