A front-line worker in personal protective equipment (PPE) sprayed flammable liquid on a burning funeral pyre of a man killed by coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at a crematorium on the outskirts of Mumbai, India, on 15 April 2021. REUTERS / Francis Mascarenhas / Archive Photo
Gas and firewood kilns at a crematorium in the western Indian state of Gujurat have been operating non-stop for so long during the COVID-19 pandemic that metal parts have begun to melt. .
“We are working 24 hours a day at 100% capacity to incinerate bodies on time,” Kamlesh Sailor, the president of the trust that runs the crematorium in the city of Surat, which polishes diamonds, told Reuters .
And, with hospitals full and low on oxygen and medicines in an already crunchy health system, several major cities report a much larger number of cremations and burials according to coronavirus protocols than official COVID-19 death tolls. , according to crematorium and cemetery workers, media and a review of government data.
India on Monday recorded a record 273,810 new daily infections and 1,619 deaths. Its total number of cases now stands at more than 15 million, second only to the United States.
Reliable data is at the heart of any government response to the pandemic, without which hospital planning, oxygen and medicine vacancies become difficult, according to experts.
Government officials say the mismatch in death levels can be caused by several factors, including excessive caution.
A senior state health official said the increase in the number of cremations had occurred due to the incineration of bodies using COVID protocols “even if there is a 0.1% chance that the person is positive.”
“In many cases, patients arrive at the hospital in an extremely critical condition and die before the test, and there are cases where patients are taken to the hospital and we don’t know if they are positive or not,” he said. say the official.
“VERY IRKSOME”
But Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Michigan, said many parts of India were in “data denial.”
“Everything is so muddy,” he said. “No one seems to understand the situation very clearly, and that’s very annoying.”
In Surat, Gujarat’s second largest city, the Sailor Kurukshetra crematorium and a second crematorium known as Umra have cremated more than 100 bodies a day under COVID protocols over the past week, well above the official daily COVID death toll. of the city, about 25, to interviews with workers.
Prashant Kabrawala, administrator of Narayan Trust, which manages a third city crematorium called Ashwinikumar, refused to provide the number of bodies received under COVID protocols, but said cremations there had tripled in recent weeks.
“I’ve been going to the crematorium regularly since 1987 and I’ve been involved in its day-to-day running since 2005, but I haven’t seen so many dead bodies coming to burn in all these years,” even during an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1994 and the floods in 2006.
Government spokesmen in Gujurat did not respond to requests for comment.
India is not the only country that has questioned its coronavirus statistics. But worker testimony and a growing number of academic literature suggest that deaths in India are being underreported compared to other countries.
Mukherjee’s research on India’s first wave concludes that there were 11 times more infections than reported, in line with estimates from studies conducted in other countries. There were also two to five times more deaths than reported, well above world averages.
WORK DAY AND NIGHT
In Lucknow, the capital of the populous northern state of Uttar Pradesh, data from COVID’s largest crematorium, Baikunthdham, show twice the number of bodies arriving on six different days in April than government data on deaths by COVID of the whole city.
The figures do not take into account a second single COVID crematorium in the city, nor the burials in the Muslim community which makes up a quarter of the city’s population.
The head of the Azad crematorium, which has only one name, said the number of cremations under COVID protocols has multiplied by five in recent weeks.
“We’re working day and night,” he said. “Incinerators work full time, but many people still have to wait with their bodies for the last rites.”
A Uttar Pradesh government spokesman did not respond to any requests for comment.
Elsewhere, India Today reported two crematoria in Bhopal, the capital of the central state of Madhya Pradesh, 187 bodies were cremated following COVID protocols in four days this month, while the official number of deaths for COVID it was five.
Last week, a Gujarati newspaper Sandesh counted 63 bodies leaving a single COVID hospital to be buried in the state’s largest city, Ahmedabad, on a day when government data showed 20 coronavirus deaths.
The Lancet Medical Journal noted last year that four states in India that accounted for 65% of COVID deaths nationwide each recorded 100% of their coronavirus deaths.
But less than a quarter of deaths in India are medically certified, especially in rural areas, meaning the true mortality rate from COVID in many of India’s other 24 states may never be known. .
“Most deaths are not recorded, so it is impossible to make a validation calculation,” Mukherjee said.
Our standards: the principles of trust of Thomson Reuters.