15,000,000 deaths caused by Covid in 2 years
WHO PANDEMIC MORTALITY ESTIMATE FAR EXCEEDS OFFICIAL COUNT OF 6M
TThese sobering data not only point to the impact of the pandemic, but also to the need for countries to invest in more resilient health systems.”
he World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that nearly 15 million people were killed either by Covid-19 or by the pandemic’s impact on overwhelmed health systems in the past two years, more than double the official death toll of six million.
“These sobering data not only point to the impact of the pandemic, but also to the need for countries to invest in more resilient health systems that can sustain essential health services during crises,” WHO DirectorGeneral Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said yesterday.
Tedros Ghebreyesus | WHO Director-General
Impact on health systems
Scientists tasked by WHO with calculating the actual number of Covid-19 deaths between January 2020 and the end of last year estimated there were between 13.3 million and 16.6 million deaths caused directly by Covid or due to the pandemic’s impact on health systems.
Most of the fatalities were in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas. More than two-thirds occurred in just 10 countries.
Middle-income countries experienced 81 per cent of the excess deaths, with 53 per cent occurring in lower-middle-income nations. High income countries reported 15 per cent and lowincome countries reported 4 per cent of the excess deaths.
Of the total, 9.5 million deaths were estimated to be directly caused by Covid infections, according to the WHO report. The number of deaths was most likely to be 14.9 million, the WHO said. About 70 countries don’t record causes of death among their populations.
Men accounted for 57 per cent of deaths, and most were among people over 60.
India has been consistently objecting to the methodology adopted by the WHO to project excess mortality estimates based on mathematical models, the Union Health Ministry said yesterday.
“Despite India’s objection to the process, methodology, and outcome of this modelling exercise, the WHO has released the excess mortality estimates without adequately addressing India’s concerns. India had also informed the WHO that in view of the availability of authentic data published through Civil Registration System (CRS) by Registrar General of India (RGI), mathematical models should not be used for projecting excess mortality numbers for India,” it said.
Based on reports submitted by states and Union Territories, Vital Statistics of India, based on the CRS, are published annually by the RGI and the last such national report for the year 2019 was published in June 2021 and for 2020, on May 3, 2022, a Ministry statement said, adding that India “firmly believes that such robust and accurate data generated through legal framework of a member state must be respected, accepted and used by WHO rather than relying on less than accurate mathematical projection based on non-official sources of data”.
‘No response’
Underlining that the WHO till date has not responded to India’s contention, it said that India had pointed out the inconsistencies in the criteria and assumption that WHO used to classify countries into Tier I and II as well as questioning the very basis for placing India in the latter, which India “doesn’t deserve”.
It also noted that WHO had also admitted that data in respect of 17 Indian states was obtained from some websites and media reports to use in their mathematical model. “Throughout the process of dialogue, engagement and communication with WHO, WHO has projected different excess mortality figures for India citing multiple models, which itself raises questions on the validity and robustness of the models used,” it said.
The ministry also said that India objected to the use of Global Health Estimates (GHE) 2019 in one of the models used by WHO for calculating excess mortality estimates for India.
“[The] GHE itself is an estimate. Therefore, a modelling approach which provides mortality estimates on the basis of another estimate, while totally disregarding the actual data available within the country, exhibits lack of academic rigour.”
‘Not uniform’
“The test positivity rate, another key variable used by the WHO for Covid-19 in India, was never uniform throughout the country at any point of time. Owing to its large area, diversity and a population of 1.3 billion which witnessed variable severity of the pandemic both across space and time, India consistently objected to the use of ‘one size fits all’, approach and model, which may be applicable to smaller countries but cannot be applicable to India.”
The Health Ministry said that the CRS data “clearly reveals that the narrative sought to be created based on various modelling estimates of India’s Covid-19 deaths being many times the reported figure is totally removed from reality”.
“Since RGI figures capture ‘all cause mortality’ for a particular year, mortality figures of Covid-19 could at best be considered a sub-set of the ‘all cause mortality’ in that year. Therefore, reliable figures released by the statutory authority captured through a rigorous process across the country are presently available for analysis and support in policy planning.”
However, it said that despite communicating this data to the WHO, it “for reasons best known to them conveniently chose to ignore” this.