New research suggests that the actual number of COVID-19 deaths in India could be as much as 10 times the official count. An independent, non-government report released Tuesday estimates the number of deaths at between 3 to 4.7 million, from January 2020 to June 2021. India’s official government estimate of COVID-19 deaths is more than 414,000. But most health experts agree that the actual number is likely much higher. The new report estimates the number of “excess deaths” from the disease. This is generally defined as the difference between the number of observed deaths and the number of expected deaths during a specific period of time. The research was led by Arvind Subramanian, the Indian government’s former chief economic adviser. Researchers from the Center for Global Development -- a Washington-based think tank -- and Harvard University also helped produce the report. The researchers admitted that it will be difficult to get a completely correct death number in India. However, such a number “is likely to be an order of magnitude greater than the official count,” they said. The team said the official count likely missed deaths because of overcrowded hospitals and widespread failures in the country’s health system during a huge rise in cases earlier this year. “True deaths are likely to be in the several millions not hundreds of thousands,” the report said. The researchers said this makes the deaths “arguably India’s worst human tragedy since Partition and independence.” Partition was a process that divided the British-ruled Indian subcontinent into independent India and Pakistan in 1947. When independence came, up to 1 million people are believed to have been killed in ethnic violence involving Hindus and Muslims.