COVID-19 Becomes a Top 10 Cause of Daily Deaths in India as Cases Cross 1 Million

UPDATE (July 22, 2020): As of July 22, India had over 1.23 million (12.3 lakh) confirmed cases and set a new record for daily deaths with 1,129 deaths reported on this day. With this, COVID-19 has become one of the top 5 most likely daily causes of death among Indian adults^ǂ.

With over 1 million (10 lakh) confirmed cases and 25,000 deaths as of July 16, 2020,^1,2 India seems poised to be the new epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the lack of widespread testing (so far, India has performed 9,228 tests/million population compared to 137,146 tests/million by the USA)¹, the true number of infections could be much higher.

The July 16 tally of daily COVID-19 cases and deaths broke the previous daily record*, with 35,468 new cases and 680 new deaths.¹ However, the number of daily deaths due to COVID-19 also passed another grim milestone on this day: As of July 16th, COVID-19 was one of the top 10 most-likely daily causes of death among Indian adults (please note that this is NOT a year-to-date or accumulated total, but daily deaths according to projections based on latest data available for causes of death in India).^1-3

To create visualization of the latest data on daily deaths from COVID-19 and the Top 20 causes of mortality** in India, I looked at data for COVID-19 deaths in India as well as the latest data available for leading causes of mortality in the in India (from the National Burden Estimates for 2017, published in 2019, which seems to be the study to provide the latest and most accurate estimates for causes of death in India). This visualization starts on March 13 (the day on which the first COVID-19 death was reported in India) through July 16th. Please click the play button to view the animation below:

More than half of the 25000+ deaths happened in the last 30 days. And we are likely closer to the beginning than we are to the end of this pandemic.

The high death toll of COVID-19 and the alarming rate at which infections and deaths have increased lately shows why it is imperative that we continue to practice physical distancing and adopt measures to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus such as wearing masks and washing hands frequently.

UPDATE: The time-lapse animation was updated to include cancers in the correct position in chart. The article now reflects this change.

Have questions or comments? Drop me a line at mail@aar.am.

*Excluding June 16th when the adjusted tally of deaths was 2004, but this sudden increase was likely due to Delhi and Mumbai revising their overall COVID-19 death count from prior days by several hundreds.

**I excluded perinatal diseases from the Top 20 list as they occur in the time surrounding childbirth and affect newborn babies, while COVID-19 so far appears to predominantly affect and cause deaths in adults. Most deaths from diarrhoea occur among children less than 2 years of age, but I did include it in the graph since I could not find data for age groupwise breakdown of diarrhoea deaths.

^ǂWhile diarrhoea averaged 1422 daily deaths, approximately 327 of these deaths were estimated to occur in the 0-14 year age group alone, thus suggesting that overall daily deaths due to COVID-19 on July 22 were greater than average daily deaths due to diarrhoea in Indian adults.

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Sources

1. Worldometer Website. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ Accessed July 16, 2020.
2. COVID19India Website. https://www.covid19india.org/ Accessed July 16, 2020.
3. Menon GR, Singh L, Sharma P, et al. National Burden Estimates of healthy life lost in India, 2017: an analysis using direct mortality data and indirect disability data. Lancet Glob Health. 2019;7(12):e1675-e1684. doi:10.1016/S2214-109X(19)30451-6