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Nearly 4.7 million people died in India because of Covid-19: either directly due to the disease or indirectly due its impact on health systems and the society, said a World Health Organization’s (WHO) report on Thursday.
The number of deaths is 10-times more than given by India’s government, which rejected the WHO’s report.
India has officially recorded 481,486 Covid19 deaths between January 1 2020 and December 31, 2021. Therefore, the WHO estimates put that figure at nearly 10-times the official estimates, and basically imply that India accounts for about a third of the Covid19 deaths across the world.
WHO report pegs the deaths related to Covid19 at 47, 40,894 during 2020 and 2021. It said that the full death toll associated directly or indirectly with Covid-19 (described as excess mortality) between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021 was approximately 14.9 mn (ranging between 13.3 mn to 16.6 mn) across the globe.
Excess mortality includes deaths directly due to Covid19 disease or indirectly due to the pandemic’s impact on health systems and society. It is calculated as the difference between the number of deaths that have occurred and the number that would be expected in the absence of the pandemic based on data from earlier years.
The WHO has also released the methodology followed by it to arrive at these numbers. It said: “We consider the most complex sub-national scenario in which the number of regions with monthly data varies by month, using India as an example. For India, we use a variety of sources for the registered number of deaths at the state and union-territory level. The information was either reported directly by the states through official reports and automatic vital registration, or by journalists who obtained death registration information through Right To Information requests.”
A statement from the Union Health Ministry said 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 Health Ministry said.
India released the Civil Registration System (CRS) report on births and deaths by the Registrar General of India (RGI) earlier this week.
The Health Ministry said that the country had informed WHO that in view of the “authentic data” published through the CRS by RGI, mathematical models should not be used for projecting excess mortality numbers for India.
India said that registration of births and deaths in the country is extremely ‘robust’ and is governed by decades old statutory legal framework – Births & Deaths Registration Act, 1969.
“The CRS data of 2020 published by RGI on May 3, 2022 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,” India said, adding that this data was shared with the WHO for preparation of excess mortality report.
“Despite communicating this data to WHO for supporting their publication, WHO for reasons best known to them conveniently chose to ignore the available data submitted by India and published the excess mortality estimates for which the methodology, source of data, and the outcomes has been consistently questioned by India,” said the Ministry claimed.
WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “These sobering data not only point to the impact of the pandemic but also to the need for all countries to invest in more resilient health systems that can sustain essential health services during crises, including stronger health information systems.” He added that WHO is committed to working with all countries to strengthen their health information systems to generate better data for better decisions and better outcomes.
WHO said that most of the excess deaths (84 percent) are concentrated in South-East Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Some 68 percent of excess deaths are concentrated in just 10 countries globally. Middle-income countries account for 81 percent of the 14.9 million excess deaths (53 percent in lower-middle-income countries and 28 percent in upper-middle-income countries) over the 24-month period, with high-income and low-income countries each accounting for 15 percent and 4 percent, respectively. It also said that the global death toll was higher for men (57 percent) than females (47 percent) and higher among older adults.
“The absolute count of the excess deaths is affected by the population size. The number of excess deaths per 100,000 gives a more objective picture of the pandemic than reported COVID-19 mortality data,” WHO noted.
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