Pandemic and Prejudice: How COVID-19 Worsened India’s Existing Inequalities; Covid-19 Hit Women Harder Than Men in India, Unlike Most of the World, and other C-Virus related stories

Pandemic and Prejudice: How COVID-19 Worsened India’s Existing Inequalities:

In 2020, life expectancy in India saw substantial and disparate declines due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with an estimated 1.19 million excess deaths, significantly higher than official figures.

The study utilized high-quality data from over 765,000 individuals to analyze life expectancy changes by sex and social group, revealing greater impacts on younger populations, women, and marginalized groups.

The international study reveals that life expectancy in India suffered large and unequal declines during the COVID-19 pandemic. Co-authored by the University of Oxford’s Department of Sociology and the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science’s Dr. Aashish Gupta and Professor Ridhi Kashyap, the study was published today (July 19) in the journal Science Advances.

Overall, mortality across India was 17% higher in 2020 compared to 2019, implying 1.19 million excess deaths in India. This extrapolated estimate is about eight times higher than the official number of COVID-19 deaths in India, and 1.5 times higher than the World Health Organization’s estimates.

Ridhi Kashyap, Professor of Demography and Computational Social Science at the University of Oxford said, “Our findings challenge the view that 2020 was not significant in terms of the mortality impacts and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic in India. While a mortality surge caused by the Delta variant in 2021 received more attention, our study reveals significant and unequal mortality increases even earlier on in the pandemic.”

Socio-Demographic Analysis: Life Expectancy Changes by Social Groups

Using high-quality survey data from 765,180 individuals, the study estimated changes in life expectancy at birth, by sex and social group between 2019 and 2020 in India – a country where one-third of global pandemic excess deaths are thought to have occurred.

The study found large mortality impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 on younger age groups, women, and marginalized social groups. Marginalized social groups within India experienced greater life expectancy declines than the most privileged social groups. —>READ MORE HERE

Covid-19 hit women harder than men in India, unlike most of the world:

A new analysis of deaths during the covid-19 pandemic estimates that women and those in certain minority groups experienced the greatest declines in life expectancy

The covid-19 pandemic may have impacted India more severely than previously estimated, with the life expectancy of women, certain social groups and younger demographics experiencing the most severe declines.

Previous mortality estimates during the covid-19 pandemic in India relied on official death records. Yet lockdowns disrupted this system, which already underreported deaths in women and children even before the pandemic. It doesn’t collect certain information like caste or ethnicity either, says Sangita Vyas at Hunter College in New York.

So Vyas and her colleagues gathered information on deaths in India from the National Family Health Survey. This country-wide survey asks participants whether anyone in their household died in the past four years and if so, to provide data like the person’s date of death, age and gender – only including options for men and women.

The researchers analysed data from more than 765,000 participants who completed the survey in 2021. They found that deaths in 2020 were about 17 per cent higher than in 2019. If similar increases occurred across the country, that indicates almost 1.2 million excess deaths in 2020 – eight times the official number of covid-19 deaths in India in 2020 and 1.5 times the World Health Organization’s estimates, according to the study.

Between 2019 and 2020, overall life expectancy at birth declined by more than 2.5 years in the sample, compared with a 1.5-year decline in the US during the same period. Life expectancy changes differed by gender, age and social group, too. —>READ MORE HERE

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