The absence of reliable registration of Covid-19 deaths in India has prevented the proper assessment and monitoring of what appears to be one of the worst episodes of coronavirus pandemic. India's relatively young age structure tends to conceal the severity of Covid-19 mortality, which is concentrated in older age groups. In this paper, we present four different demographic samples of Indian populations for which we have information on both their demographic structures and death outcomes. We show that we can model the age gradient of Covid-19 mortality in India and use this modeling for estimating the most accurate level of Covid-19 mortality in the country. Our findings point to a death toll of about 2.2 million persons by late May 2021. Once India's age structure taken into account, these figures correspond to one of the most severe examples of Covid-19 mortality in the world.
Estimating the death toll of the Covid-19 pandemic in India