Fears of cover-up as crematoriums record twice the number of Covid fatalities as official death toll
As India battles through one of the world’s deadliest surges of the Covid-19 pandemic, this week India’s health minister Harsh Vardhan insisted that its fatality rate from the disease remained “the lowest in the world”.
It was a statement that jarred with the devastating images and accounts that have flowed out of India in the past fortnight, of hospitals and morgues filled to capacity, people dying on pavements from scarcity of oxygen, and crematoriums and graveyards visibly overflowing with bodies.