India: COVID-19 tally tops 7 million, Explanations for low death rate

October 11, 2020

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The India Ministry of Health is now reporting more than 7 million total confirmed COVID-19 cases, the second country to reach this level.

Of the total of 7,053,806 cases, 6,077,976, or 86 percent have recovered leaving 867,496 active cases.

The Indian states reporting the most include Maharashtra (1.5 million), Andhra Pradesh (750,000), Karnataka (700,000) and Tamil Nadu (650,000).

The total deaths in India are 108,334, or 1.5 percent of the total cases.

So the question is, why is India’s death rate so low?

A recent Times of India report looks at this question, and there are a number of theories.

One is that India has a younger population than countries with higher death rates like the United States and countries in Europe.

India ranks #1 globally in 11 neglected tropical diseases

The viral disease is well documented as having a harsher effect on the older population, especially with underlying health conditions like diabetes and heart disease, while India has a younger population with a median age of 28 years.

Another possible explanation is COVID-19 treatments in the earliest stages of the pandemic when European countries were battling the disease and when India’s outbreak started to take hold at least a month later, some treatments had become more established.

It has also been suggested that viral diseases like dengue fever may provide some immunity to COVID-19. In a study that looked at the outbreak in Brazil, the researchers said places with lower coronavirus infection rates and slower case growth were locations that had suffered intense dengue outbreaks this year or last.

India is also a dengue fever endemic country.

Lastly, it could be due to just undercounting. “Our poor routine death surveillance system… misses many deaths in the first place, according to a community medicine expert in India.

Or maybe it’s some combination of two or more factors.