India’s Covid death maybe 6-7 times higher than officially reported: Study

It added that attribution to chronic diseases as well as incomplete certification may have also contributed to the data deficiency, as "most deaths occur in rural India, without any medical attention."

The first study was a mortality reported in a nationally representative telephonic survey conducted by CVoter, a private polling agency that launched the survey to help track the pandemic and covered over 1.4 lakh adults.

In addition to that, it looked at the Centre's data on deaths in government hospitals — with over 90 percent of them being in rural India — and civil registration systems (CRS) data related to COVID-19 deaths recorded in ten states.