NEW DELHI: India has vehemently rebutted the World Health Organization’s use of a mathematical model to calculate the number of Covid deaths, claiming that the “figure is wholly erroneous.
The Union health ministry’s rejoinder, claiming that the nation has a “very solid” system of births and deaths registration, dubbed the WHO’s data gathering technique “statistically flawed and scientifically dubious.”
WHO reported today that between January 2020 and December 2021, there were 4.7 million “excess” Covid fatalities in India – ten times the official amount and accounting for nearly a third of all Covid deaths globally. According to the research, the global tally was 15 million — more than double the official figure of 6 million.
In 2020, India’s Civil Registration System documented 4,74,806 fatalities as excess — that is, deaths that were above and beyond usual.
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare remarked, “India has always questioned WHO’s own acknowledgment that data on seventeen Indian states was acquired from various websites and news reports and included in their mathematical model.”
“This demonstrates an improper statistical technique for assessing excess mortality in India,” the statement said.
“WHO disseminated the excess mortality figures without appropriately addressing India’s concerns,” the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare stated, despite India’s protests about the modeling exercise’s strategy, methodology, and conclusion.
Throughout the process of debate, engagement, and communication with WHO, they predicted varied excess mortality rates for India based on several models; that were later questioned in terms of validity and robustness by the Indian government.
Noting that data from the Civil Registration System 2020 was shared with WHO for the purpose of preparing the excess mortality report, the ministry stated, “Despite communicating this data to WHO to support their publication.
WHO conveniently chose to ignore the available data submitted by India and published excess mortality estimates for which India has consistently questioned the methodology, source of data, and outcomes.”
WHO’s way to analyse mortality is computed as the difference between the number of fatalities and the number that would have occurred in the absence of the pandemic based on the previous year’s estimates.
“Excess mortality is defined as fatalities caused directly (by the illness) or indirectly (by the pandemic’s influence on health systems and society) by COVID-19.
COVID-19-related deaths are due to a variety of health conditions for which people were unable to obtain prevention and treatment owing to the pandemic’s demand on health facilities.” The report claims that.
Additionally, the WHO claimed that they used a mathematical technique since many countries “remain unable of conducting adequate mortality surveillance and hence lack the data essential to compute excess mortality.”
Edited By : Khushi Thakur
Published By : Shubham Ghulaxe
