Delhi objects to WHO’s statistics on Covid deaths in India

In a strong rebuff to a New York Times (NYT) report that says India is stalling release of World Health Organization (WHO) global Covid death toll report, the Union Health Ministry has said that it objects to the WHO’s methodology applied to counting the number of deceased.

One of India’s major grievances is over WHO’s “one size fits all approach”. The Health Ministry has stated that the statistical model projects the estimates for a country of geographical size and population of India along with other countries which have smaller population.

“Such one size fits all approach and models which are true for smaller countries like Tunisia may not be applicable to India with a population of 1.3 billion,” said the ministry.

According to WHO’s calculations, in India, 4 million people have died, which is almost eight times the official figure of 520,000. As the WHO is reportedly gearing up to make their estimate of the global Covid death toll figures public, India has shared its serious objections over the methodology adopted to arrive at the number of deaths during the pandemic.

The statement by the ministry was in response to an NYT article titled, “India Is Stalling the WHO’s Efforts to Make Global Covid Death Toll Public”, dated April 16, 2022. The article alleges that WHO’s extensive research and analysis by experts around the world for a year on the number of people who died during the world-wide pandemic, has been delayed for months because of objections from India, which disagrees with the calculation of how many of its citizens died and has tried to keep it from becoming public.

The GOI press release, however, stated that India has been open to collaborate with WHO since such data sets would be helpful from the policy making point of view and it has earlier too said that it required an “in-depth clarity on methodology” and “clear proof of its validity”.

India felt the WHO process was neither collaborative nor adequately representative and the process did not “hold scientific rigour and rational scrutiny as expected from an organisation of the stature of the WHO”.

The ministry has hit out at the WHO model, which gives two highly different sets of excess mortality estimates when they use data from Tier I countries and when they use unverified data from 18 Indian states. “Such wide variation in estimates raises concerns about validity and accuracy of such a modelling exercise.”

India has asserted that if the model is accurate and reliable, it should be authenticated by running it for all Tier I countries and if the result off such exercise may be shared with all member states.

The NYT story that followed by the health ministry rebuttal has created a political debate in India. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, along with the screenshot of the NYT article, tweeted on Sunday. “Modi ji does not speak the truth, he does not let (others) speak it.”

He further tweeted, “They still lie that no one died of oxygen shortage! I had said earlier also—40 lakh Indians died, not 5 lakh, due to the government’s negligence in Covid. Please, Modi Ji give a compensation of Rs 4 lakh to every victim’s family,” he added.