India objects to WHO report stating more than 4.7 million deaths due to COVID

Record ID: 1671413

  • Title: India objects to WHO report stating more than 4.7 million deaths due to COVID
  • Date: 5th May 2022
  • Summary: NEW DELHI, INDIA (FILE - APRIL 28, 2021) (REUTERS) (MUTE) VARIOUS OF DRONE FOOTAGE SHOWING FUNERAL PYRES BURNING AT A DELHI CREMATORIUM
  • Embargoed: 19th May 2022 18:27
  • Keywords: India New Delhi World Health Organisation causalities coronavirus cremation deaths graveyard health hospital pandemic report
  • Location: NEW DELHI/ BIJNOR, UTTAR PRADESH, INDIA
  • City: NEW DELHI/ BIJNOR, UTTAR PRADESH, INDIA
  • Country: India
  • Topics: Asia / Pacific,Health/Medicine
  • Reuters ID: LVA001GAPSFV3
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: India on Thursday (May 05) objected to World Health Organisation's estimates of excess COVID-19 deaths in the country.
    The WHO report said that almost half of the deaths that until now had not been counted were in India.
    The report suggests that 4.7 million people died there as a result of the pandemic, mainly during a huge surge in May and June 2021.
    The Indian government, however, puts its death toll for the January 2020-December 2021 period far lower: about 480,000.
    The report shows the date from January 2020 to the end of December 2021.
    The WHO's excess mortality figures reflect people who died of COVID-19 as well as those who died as an indirect result of the outbreak, including people who could not access healthcare for other conditions when systems were overwhelmed during huge waves of infection.
    It also accounts for deaths averted during the pandemic, for example because of the lower risk of traffic accidents during lockdowns.
    But the numbers are also far higher than the official tally because of deaths that were missed in countries without adequate reporting.
    Even pre-pandemic, around six in 10 deaths around the world were not registered, WHO said.
    WHO said it had not yet fully examined new data provided this week by India.
    In a statement issued after the numbers were published, the Indian government said WHO had released the report "without adequately addressing India's concerns" over what it called "questionable" methods.
    The WHO panel, made up of international experts who have been working on the data for months, used a combination of national and local information, as well as statistical models, to estimate totals where the data is incomplete - a methodology that India has criticised.
    "To apply assumptions based on a subset of state, based on reports that come from the websites and media reports and then you come out with an exorbitant number is not tenable. So, that's not the process and we are disappointed by what WHO (World Health Organisation) has done," said India's senior health official, Vinod Kumar Paul.
    However, other independent assessments have also put the death toll in India far higher than the official government tally, including a report published in Science which suggested 3 million people may have died of COVID in the country.
    Other models have also reached similar conclusions about the global death toll being far higher than the recorded statistics.
    For comparison, around 50 million people are thought to have died in the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, and 36 million have died of HIV since the epidemic began in the 1980s.
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