India pegs Covid deaths at 5.25 lakh, rubbishes WHO’s estimate of 47 lakh

Hyderabad: The Centre has once again refuted the World Health Organization’s projected estimate of 47 lakh excess Covid-19 deaths in the country, stating that as on July 16, as reported by States and union Territories, there were 5,25,660 deaths due to Covid-19 in India.

Replying to a question by senior Congress MP Digvijaya Singh in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday, union Minister of State (Health & Family Welfare) Dr Bharati Pravin Pawar said India had already registered a ‘strong objection’ to the process, methodology and outcome of WHO’S ‘unscientific modelling approach’, especially when India had provided authentic data published through Civil Registration System by Registrar General of India to WHO.

“India’s approach to COVID-19 management is in line with test-trace-isolate-treat approach along with COVID-19 vaccination and consistent use of mask, hand hygiene, physical distancing and other preventive measures as advocated by WHO and other global public health organization,” the Minister said.

The WHO, based on a mathematical modeling exercise had projected an estimate of about 47 lakh excess deaths in India associated directly or indirectly with COVID-19 pandemic, between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021.

“This is primarily an estimate of deaths due to all-causes which includes deaths due to COVID-19 also. This mathematical modeling based approach by WHO suffered from a number of inconsistencies and erroneous assumptions. India had highlighted against the classification of certain countries under Tier-1 while they had displayed data inconsistencies in reporting and placing India under Tier 2 while India has followed a robust system of data reporting,” the Minister said.

India had also objected to the one size fits all approach adopted by WHO, which might be true for smaller countries but cannot be applied to a huge and diverse country like India which had varied case trajectory across multiple states and at different periods during the pandemic, she said, adding that WHO was also asked to explain the unscientific approach wherein their projections were based on data from only 17 States/UTs obtained from websites/RTIs taken at varied periods of time and extrapolated to the entire country.

The Minister also said the study did not account for varied Covid-19 test positivity rate across States, and at different periods of time besides the implications of using different diagnostic methods (RAT/RT-PCR) in different countries. According to WHO’s own admission, their modeling exercise suffered from a number of limitations like limited representation and generalization of variable utilized to settings that may be systematically different, she said.

The Central Council of Health and Family Welfare, a representative body of Health Ministers from all States/UTs of India, constituted under Article 263 of Constitution of India, has passed a unanimous resolution against the WHO’s approach in this regard and authorized the union Health Minister to convey their collective disappointment to WHO, the Minister added.