A year and a half into the pandemic, India’s official Covid-19 data is still plagued by gaps

A year and a half into the pandemic and two months before India’s only national-level source of disaggregated Covid-19 data ceases operations, India’s official Covid data remain wanting.

A team of researchers in a new preprint paper estimate that by early June, age and gender distribution was available for just one in five reported Covid-19 cases and deaths, and comorbidity distribution for less than one in three reported deaths in India.

Varun Vasudevan and Abeynaya Gnanasekaran, doctoral candidates at the Stanford Institute for Computational & Mathematical Engineering, along with researchers at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy in New Delhi, assessed over 100 web and mobile digital platforms hosted by the Union and state governments for reporting data on Covid-19 surveillance, vaccinations and bed availability between May 22 and June 5. The study builds on two earlier papers on disparities in India’s Covid-19 reporting by Vasudevan and Gnanasekaran.

Lack of data

The researchers scored states and Union territories on 45 surveillance indicators that covered availability, accessibility, granularity and privacy violations in the reporting of confirmed, deceased, recovered, quarantined and critical/ICU (intensive care unit) Covid-19 cases. They found that MyGov, the central government platform that currently provides the most Covid-19 data, does not provide granular information such as data…

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