India reports over 500,000 deaths from COVID, experts count millions more

India's death toll from COVID-19 crossed 500,000 on Friday, a level many health experts say was breached last year but obscured by inaccurate surveys and unaccounted dead in the hinterlands, where millions remain vulnerable to the disease.

The country, which has the fourth-highest tally of deaths globally, recorded 400,000 deaths by July last year after the devastating outbreak from the Delta variant of the coronavirus, according to official data.

Some experts believe the figures were much higher.

"Our study published in the journal Science estimates 3 million COVID deaths in India until mid-2021 using three different databases," Chinmay Tumbe, an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad who co-authored the study, told Reuters.

Last month, the Indian government dismissed the study as baseless in a notification saying there is a robust system of birth and death reporting.

India's states record deaths from COVID-19 after collating data from their districts. In the last few months, several states have updated the number of deaths, some under pressure from the country's top court. In most instances, authorities said there were lapses due to delayed registrations and other administrative errors.

India is currently in the midst of a third wave of the coronavirus led by the Omicron variant, which some top experts say is already in community transmission although federal officials say most cases are mild.

Last month, the government eased testing norms and told states to drop mandatory testing for contacts of confirmed cases unless they were old or battling other conditions. But, with the number of tests falling, the government issued a revised circular warning states they would miss the spread of the virus.

But, as many infected people took the option of not testing at all, total infection numbers may not reflect the extent and severity of cases, said Gautam Menon, a professor of physics and biology at Ashoka University near the capital who has been tracking the spread of the virus.

According to official figures, India's overall number of COVID-19 infections has reached 41.95 million, the second-highest globally behind the United States.