Government rejects report claiming India’s Covid death toll in the world

The Center called The Lancet’s report “speculative and misinformation” and said the authors themselves acknowledged several methodological flaws and inconsistencies.

The report, published by one of the world’s oldest medical journals, claims that India has an estimated cumulative excess of covid death Between January 2020 and December 2021 it was almost eight times higher than what was reported.

It said the COVID mortality rate in Indian states is not among the highest in the world due to India’s large population, but the country accounts for about 22 3% of global excess deaths as of December 31, 2021.

Although a total of 5 94 million deaths were reported worldwide in that period, the Lancet paper estimates that the pandemic killed 18 2 million people worldwide, as evidenced by higher mortality rates in that period. Is measured. This is almost three times more than the earlier estimate.

causes of documented deaths covid in india Standing at around 4,89,000 in that period, the journal estimated “excess mortality due to the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic analysis of COVID-19-related mortality, 2020-21”.

The excess mortality rate usually measures the additional deaths over a given period of time compared to the expected number and is not dependent on how the Covid-19 deaths are recorded.

However, the Union Health Ministry said that The Lancet report used different methods for different countries to study the data. For India, for example, the data sources used by the study appear to be drawn from newspaper reports and non-peer-reviewed studies, it said.

The ministry said that citing issues as sensitive as death, that too during a global public health crisis like the pandemic COVID-19, should be dealt with facts and with the necessary sensitivity.

“This type of speculative reporting has the potential to create panic in the community, may mislead people, and should be avoided,” it said.

Last month too, India dismissed previous reports of alleged under-reporting of Covid-19 deaths in the country, with the health ministry claiming it had a robust mechanism in place.