India blasts WHO over its 4.75m death toll estimate – 10 times the official count
New Delhi has hit out at the World Health Organization over its estimated pandemic-related death total for India – which put the numbers at 10 times the country’s official toll.
The WHO estimated some 4.75 million deaths in India since 2020 could be attributed to the crisis, either directly from Covid-19 or indirectly through the pandemic’s wider impact on health systems and society.
The figure, with an estimated range of 3.3 to 6.5 million, would ascribe almost one-third of the world’s pandemic-related deaths to India. The country officially reported 481,000 Covid-19 deaths for 2020-21.
The WHO figures, termed as excess mortality, are calculated as the difference between deaths that occurred and the number that would have been expected in the absence of the pandemic.
After the WHO released the numbers, New Delhi said it had consistently opposed the UN health agency’s calculation methods.
Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in a statement accused the WHO of publishing the data “without adequately addressing India’s concerns”.
Given the availability of “authentic data”, it said, “mathematical models should not be used for projecting excess mortality numbers for India”.
The country’s size, diversity and population of 1.3 billion meant the ‘one size fits all’ approach and model “cannot be applicable to India”, the ministry said. “WHO, for reasons best known to them, conveniently chose to ignore the available data submitted by India.”
The Delta variant of Covid-19 was first detected in India in October 2020 and went on to trigger a huge surge in cases in the country the following April – and then became the globally dominant strain.
Officially India has said just under 525,000 people have died in the country from Covid-19, including deaths recorded this year. However, experts have consistently believed the true toll was several times higher.
Samira Asma, the WHO’s data chief, said the agency held a series of consultations with New Delhi and would continue “to engage with colleagues from India”.
“We need to honour the lives tragically cut short, lives we lost – and we must hold ourselves and our policymakers accountable,” Asma told a press conference.
The pandemic killed around 15 million worldwide in 2020 and 2021, according to WHO estimates – nearly triple the number of deaths officially attributed to the disease and equalling around one in every 500 people globally.
India’s main opposition Congress party on Friday demanded a hefty rise in compensation for the families of those who died of Covid-19.
“Science doesn’t LIE. Modi does,” Congress’s second-in-command, Rahul Gandhi, tweeted, citing the WHO report and referring to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Respect families who have lost loved ones.”
He asked the government to give families of each person dying of Covid-19 400,000 rupees (HK$41,170). The government currently gives 50,000.
Some Indian states, nevertheless, have agreed to compensate more families than their official tally suggests. Modi’s home state of Gujarat, for example, has recorded about 11,000 Covid-19 fatalities but has approved at least 87,000 compensation claims.