61% Indians know one or more people in their social circles who died of Covid, survey says

Survey by LocalCircles also found that deaths before Covid results and patients who have comorbidities are not included in the official toll in many cases.

File photo of medics and relatives carrying the body of a Covid-19 patient for cremation in New Delhi (Representational image) | Manvender Vashist | PTI

New Delhi: India has registered a total of 1,40,573 Covid-19 deaths till date and a new survey has found that 61 per cent Indians know of one or more people who have succumbed to the infection.

The survey by LocalCircles, a community social media platform, also noted that 44 per cent of its 16,000 respondents know of one or more individuals who are likely to have died due to coronavirus but their deaths were not labelled as Covid deaths.

Published Monday, the survey revealed that people from tier 3 and tier 4 cities in India said it was still hard for them to believe that the pandemic was a reality and people were not wearing masks or observing physical distancing.

Furthermore, several people were also not getting themselves tested despite showing Covid symptoms.

The respondents also said that after they got to know about a Covid death they would get more cautious, however, normal course of life usually resumed after a few weeks.

Several deaths not included in official toll

LocalCircles also found that if patients who had symptoms of Covid died before test results or had an inconclusive death — they were not included in the death toll.

In many other cases, Covid-positive patients with comorbidities are usually reported as a comorbidity death, which is also not part of the official toll.

Of the survey’s 16,000 respondents across 208 districts in the country, 69 per cent were men and 31 per cent were women. Furthermore, 51 per cent were from tier 1 districts, 24 per cent were from tier 2 and 25 per cent were from tier 3 and 4 rural districts.

An earlier survey by LocalCircles had found that almost nine out of 10 Indians had at least one contact in their social network who had coronavirus.

And 60 per cent of the respondents had five or more Covid positive cases in their surroundings.

So far, India has registered a total of 96,77,203 cases since the beginning of the pandemic and 3,96,729 cases are still active.