The researchers, while looking at social groups, found that high caste Hindu groups experienced a life expectancy decline of 1.3 years, whereas Muslims and Scheduled Tribes experienced a 5.4-year and 4.1-year drop in their life expectancies.The pandemic, the study said, exacerbated the disparities already faced by these marginalised caste and religious groups in terms of life expectancy.Marginalised groups already had lower life expectancy, and the pandemic further increased the gap between the most privileged Indian social groups, and the most marginalised social groups in India,” said first author Aashish Gupta, a research fellow at the University of Oxford.The researchers said deaths in India increased across age groups, most prominently among the youngest and the oldest, whereas drops in life expectancy in high-income countries were largely driven by increased deaths in those aged 60 years and above.Excess deaths among the youngest could be explained by children in certain areas being more vulnerable to the COVID-19 infection, the authors said.The indirect effects of the pandemic and lockdowns, including deteriorating economic conditions and disruptions to public health services, also contributed to excess mortality in the youngest age groups, according to the authors.In a point-by-point rebuttal of the findings, the ministry said the paper erroneously argues for the need for such analyses claiming that vital registration systems in low and middle income countries, including India, is weak.“This is far from being correct. The Civil Registration System (CRS) in India is highly robust and captures over 99 per cent of deaths. This reporting has constantly increased from 75 per cent in 2015 to over 99 per cent in 2020,” the statement said.“Notably, all excess deaths in a year in the CRS are not attributable to the pandemic. Excess number is also due to an increasing trend of death registration in CRS (it was 92 per cent in 2019) and a larger population base in the succeeding year,” the statement added.The erroneous nature of the estimates published by the researchers is further corroborated by data from India’s Sample Registration System (SRS), the it added.The paper claims that excess mortality was greater in females and in younger age groups (particularly 0-19 year old children), it said.Data on about 5.3 lakh recorded deaths due to Covid-19, as well as research data from cohorts and registries consistently shows higher mortality due to Covid-19 in males than females (2:1) and in older age groups.These inconsistent and unexplainable results in the published paper further reduce any confidence in its claims, the statement said.In conclusion, the all-cause excess mortality in 2020 compared with the previous year in India is markedly less than the 11.9 lakh deaths reported in the paper, the statement said.
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