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Podcast: In Focus by The Hindu
Episode: Were the 21 lakh 'excess deaths' in 2021 caused by the Covid19 pandemic?
Description: After a nearly four-year delay, the Central government finally released a whole lot of reports about India’s births, deaths and health indicators for the year 2021. Two of these key reports, released by the Registrar General of India, were the number of deaths registered, and the medical certification of the causes of deaths. What did these reports find? In 2021, the year of the brutal and devastating Delta strain of Covid-19, India recorded 21 lakh more deaths than it did in 2020. As of May 19 this year however, the COVID-19 dashboard maintained by the Union Ministry of Health says that the total nu...