Centre rejects WHO death report, says model flawed

NEW DELHI: The World Health Organization’s estimates that 4.74 million lives were lost in India due to Covid-19 is flawed, the Union government said on Thursday with a rebuttal pointing out four major grounds on to dispute the finding.

Going by WHO’S estimates, India’s true death toll due to Covid comes to approximately 10 times the 481,000 Covid-19 fatalities recorded till December 31, 2021. Globally, there were close to 15 million deaths in 2020 and 2021, the WHO said, roughly thrice the known death toll.

“India has been consistently objecting to the methodology adopted by WHO to project excess mortality estimates based on mathematical models. Despite India’s objection to the process, methodology and outcome of this modelling exercise, WHO has released the excess mortality estimates without adequately addressing India’s concerns,” the government said in a statement.

Samira Asma, assistant director-general, data, analytics, and delivery for impact at WHO, said the briefing that the WHO “engages in a close consultative process with all member states to address the questions and clarify the methodology and request the input data”.

According to people familiar with the matter in the government, the Indian administration wrote at least 10 letters to the UN body in the last 4-5 months asking for clarity and vital information regarding the processes having been followed, but was met with a lukewarm response.

“Even during the member consultation meeting on the modelling exercise, India raised its flag thrice to speak but was given a chance only towards the end, and even then, they weren’t able to convince us on points that we raised regarding the modelling methodology etc.,” said an official, requesting anonymity.

India’s objections hinged roughly on four major grounds.

In a statement issued simultaneously, the Indian government outlined four grounds on which it objected to WHO’S assessment: First, mathematical projections are unnecessary since India has a robust death registration system (the data for 2020 from this was released earlier this week); second, some of the source data was obtained from media reports; third, a base used for calculations was itself an estimation and “ignored actual data”; and fourth, there were flaws in WHO’S assumptions about how disease spread across the country.

“There is no explanation to why a war-torn country like Iraq where data collection, analysis and reporting can be questioned is in tier 1, and India that has been putting out all data statewise from day one on the central government’s website including positivity rate and other vital numbers in tier 2 list. We also shared civil registration system data with them the day before (May 3), to which they replied today (May 5) that it would take about 3 months to process,” said the person quoted above.

INDIA’S LETTERS TO THE U.N. BODY FOR CLARITY ON METHODOLOGY GOT A LUKEWARM RESPONSE, GOVT OFFICIALS SAID