India's official death toll tops 200,000. Experts say the actual number is much higher.
28 April 2021
India's COVID-19 death toll surged past 200,000 on Wednesday, as the country set another daily global cases record of 360,960 new infections in one day.
Of note: Medical experts and members of India's opposition parties say the actual death toll and case count are much higher, a charge Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party denies.
Driving the news: As hospitals are overwhelmed with coronavirus patients amid a widespread oxygen shortage and sluggish vaccine rollout, a New York Times investigation published Tuesday found "mounting evidence" suggesting fatalities are being "overlooked or downplayed."
- Local medical workers told the NYT officials were worried about creating a "panic."
- University of Michigan epidemiologist Bhramar Mukherjee, who's been following the pandemic in India closely, told the Times "From all the modeling we've done, we believe the true number of deaths is two to five times what is being reported."
What they're saying: Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy in New Delhi, told CNN Tuesday, "It's widely known that both the case numbers and the mortality figures are undercounts, they always have been.
"Last year we estimated that only one in about 30 infections were being caught by testing, so the reported cases are a serious underestimate of true infections. This time, the mortality figures are probably serious underestimates, and what we're seeing on the ground is many more deaths, than what has been officially reported."
Laxminarayan
Go deeper: U.S. to send India supplies as country faces record COVID surge
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.