The Health Ministry also said that the authors of the Lancet have also acknowledged that ‘strict lockdowns and mediated interventions can lead to negative additional mortality during the pandemic’.
The Center on Friday termed a new study as “speculative and misinformation”, which claimed that India’s estimated cumulative additional Covid deaths between January 2020 and December 2021 were nearly eight times higher than reported.
The Lancet reported on Thursday that although the death rate due to COVID in Indian states is not among the highest in the world, due to India’s large population, the country accounts for about 22.3 per cent of the global excess deaths as of December 31, 2021.
Documented deaths due to COVID-19 in India during that period were around 489,000, said the Lancet in its paper, ‘Estimates of excess mortality due to the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic analysis of COVID-19-related mortality,’ 2020- 21′.
It said India’s estimated cumulative additional deaths due to COVID-19 between this period was the highest in the world at 4.07 million.
The Union Health Ministry reacted strongly to the study and termed it as “speculative and misinformation”.
In a statement, the ministry said the study provided estimates of all-cause mortality for several countries based on mathematical modeling exercises.
The study concluded that although COVID-19 deaths were reported between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021, totaling 5.94 million worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic caused an estimated 18.2 million deaths worldwide (as measured by excess mortality) over that period, it said.
“This is yet another estimate by another group of researchers on the higher mortality rate due to COVID-19. Mathematical modeling techniques are essentially the process of creating a mathematical representation of a real-world scenario to make predictions.
The ministry said, “Such predictions are either established on some set of inputs based on real-world scenarios, or estimates of those inputs (which may vary in accuracy according to the technology used) that are available. No,” the ministry said.
Often these studies involve taking a relatively small actual sample and extrapolating the results to the entire population, it said.
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“While this may yield accurate results for a small homogeneous country/region, such techniques have repeatedly failed to produce reliable results for a large, diverse population.
“The study takes into account the different approaches for different countries and India, for example, the data sources used by this study appear to be from newspaper reports and non-peer-reviewed studies, “It said.
The ministry said that the data of newspapers at different intervals (without any scientific basis) for the total period under study is strangely adopted.
“There were several surges during the pandemic period and different trajectories in different states (even at the sub-state level) at any given time. Therefore the methodology used by this study is less than robust,” it said.
The ministry said that for the states where the citizen registration system was available, the deaths during the pandemic have been compared with the average reported deaths for the same period in the years 2018 and 2019, including several epidemic management including lockdown, prevention efforts have not been taken into account. Field testing and contact tracing, implementation of wide-spread and clinical management protocols and the world’s largest vaccination campaign, form the foundation of epidemic management in the country.
The Ministry further clarified that reporting of deaths is done regularly in a transparent manner and updated daily in the public domain on the website of Union Health Ministry.
“Even the backlog in the Covid mortality data submitted by the states at different times is reconciled to the Government of India data on a regular basis. Also, to report the Covid deaths in India There is a financial incentive as they are entitled to monetary compensation. Hence, the chances of under-reporting are less,” it said.
The ministry noted that it was noted by the authors themselves that ‘direct measurement would be preferable to modeled excess mortality estimates and not based on all-cause mortality data, which are generally more robust’. are from the places themselves.’
“He further noted that as suggested by studies from a select few countries, including the Netherlands and Sweden, we suspect that most of the excess mortality during the pandemic is from COVID-19.
“However, substantial empirical evidence is absent in most countries. Given the high degree of diversity in epidemiological profiles between countries, it is prudent not to make such strong assumptions before conducting more research on this topic,” the ministry said.
The ministry also said that the authors also acknowledged that ‘strict lockdowns and mediated interventions can lead to negative additional mortality during the pandemic’.
“He himself has acknowledged that ultimately, the development and deployment of SARS-COV-2 vaccines has significantly reduced the mortality rate among people who contract the virus and between the general population,” it said.
“It highlights that quoting 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 This has the potential to create panic in the community, may mislead people and should be avoided,” the ministry said.
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