Augment state capacity

Actual death toll of pandemic will always be contested

An estimate by researchers associated with the World Health Organization (WHO) of the death toll from the Covid-19 pandemic in India has raised several questions in the country. Although the purpose of the exercise was to obtain a figure for the global death toll, the Indian government has objected to the numbers relating to excess mortality in India during the pandemic years, and has reportedly sought to delay the release of the estimate. It appears that the WHO estimate, using secondary data, estimated the likely number of excess deaths at 4.7 million during the pandemic. This is a very heavy