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While death rates in some countries have risen sharply in recent weeks, the opposite seems to be happening in India, at least in some places, leaving hospitals, funeral homes and cremation sites wondering what’s going on.
“It is very surprising to us,” said Shruthi Reddy, executive director of Anthyesti Funeral Services, which operates in Kolkata and Bengaluru.
The company handled about five jobs a day in January, but has only had about three a day this month.
“We have declared employee pay cuts if earnings fall below a threshold,” said Reddy.
Other numbers tell a similar story.
According to municipal data, in central Mumbai, where some 12 million people live, deaths fell 21% in March compared to the same month in 2019.
Total deaths plunged 67% in Ahmedabad during the same period.
Data from at least two other cities, along with the accounts of state health officials, show a similar pattern. Half a dozen funeral and crematorium companies also reported a drop in business, especially in April.
“If we don’t see an increase in deaths, the suspicion that there may be more deaths from COVID-19 is not true,” said Giridhar Babu, professor of epidemiology at the Indian Public Health Foundation.
On March 25, Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a blockade on 1.3 billion people in India in an attempt to stop the spread of the coronavirus, which has infected 23,077 people, killing 718 of them, according to the latest figures. .
India has evaluated about 525,000 people, which means that around 4% were positive. In the United States, about 18% of tests are positive, according to the COVID Tracking project.
India’s apparently lower death rates contrast with what has been seen elsewhere.
The Netherlands recorded around 2,000 more deaths than normal in the first week of April, for example, while in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, the number of funerals increased sharply in March.
Some cities in Italy also saw a jump in recorded deaths.
Doctors, officials and crematorium employees in India suspect that the lower death rate is largely due to fewer road and rail accidents.
“Cases of car accidents, and even patients with alcohol or drug abuse, strokes and heart attacks have come in fewer numbers,” said Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma, Assam’s health minister.
Accidents on chaotic roads in India killed more than 151,400 people in 2018, according to official data, the highest absolute number in the world.
The coronavirus blockade, which will end on May 3, will reduce road deaths by at least 15% this year compared to 2018, said Paresh Kumar Goel, director of the Ministry of Road and Highway Transport.
With passenger trains stopped, all-too-common rail accident deaths have also plummeted. In Mumbai alone, for example, more than half a dozen people die every day on the railway network.
Neeraj Kumar, who is in charge of a crematorium on the banks of the holy Ganges river in Uttar Pradesh, said crime victims were also not admitted.
“We used to have at least 10 accident-related bodies every day and many related to murder cases. But after the shutdown we only received natural death cases,” Kumar said.
The site used to carry out up to 30 cremations a day, but in the month since March 22, only 43 people had been cremated, Kumar said after flipping through the crematorium logbook.
But the lower rates could also reflect difficulties in reporting deaths during the shutdown, authorities said.
“There could be an increase when the closure ends,” said Dr. Bhavin Joshi, a senior official with the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation’s health department.
Requests for data from all over India from the national registrar went unanswered, while an official from the New Delhi Municipal Council said they could not provide numbers.
Reuters also could not obtain data from West Bengal, where some doctors accused the government of underestimating the deaths from coronavirus.
Only a state-appointed committee can declare that a patient has died from the virus.
This story has been published from a source of the cable agency without modifications to the text.
