India’s excess deaths during the pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official Covid-19 toll, likely making it modern India’s worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the south Asian country.

On Tuesday morning, the Union health ministry confirmed 374 daily fatalities, taking the total toll to 4,14,482, while cases increased by 30,093. Most experts believe the official toll is a vast undercount, but the government has dismissed those concerns as exaggerated and misleading. The report released on Tuesday estimated excess deaths — the gap between those recorded and those that would have been expected — to be between 30 lakh to 47 lakh between January 2020 and June 2021. It said an accurate figure may “prove elusive” but the true death toll “is likely to be an order of magnitude greater than the official count.”