Official records state Pakistan has 30,369 COVID-19 deaths with over 1.5 million infections
Official records state Pakistan has 30,369 COVID-19 deaths with over 1.5 million infections
The Pakistani government has rejected the World Health Organization (WHO) report on the number of COVID-19 deaths in the country, questioning the functioning of the UN body to collect data and the software used to collate the numbers. Estimated error in .
In a recent report, the WHO estimated that there were 2,60,000 COVID-19 deaths in Pakistan – eight times the official figure. The official record state Pakistan had 30,369 COVID-19 deaths with over 1.5 million infections.
“We [authorities] Manually collecting data on COVID deaths, there may be a difference of few hundred but it may not be in hundreds of thousands. It is completely baseless.” Sama News Health Minister Abdul Qadir Patel was quoted as saying.
According to the report, around 15 million people worldwide died in the past two years either from the coronavirus or its impact on overwhelming health systems, more than double the official death toll of six million. Most of the deaths occurred in Southeast Asia, Europe and America.
Minister Patel said the government has explained the calculation process to the WHO in a note dismissing the world health body’s numbers.
Mr Patel said the methodology of data collection was questionable, adding that authorities in Pakistan collected data from hospitals, union councils and cemeteries.
They suspected “some error” in the data collection software used by the WHO, which is “showing figures in averages”, according to Sama News report good.
Responding to the WHO report, the health ministry said a reporting mechanism exists whereby each COVID-19-related death is reported at the district level, which is linked at the provincial level by the respective health systems. and finally, a cumulative number is shared at the national level which is reported through official channels.
Mortality Audit by NCOC [National Command and Control Centre] Seriously looked at the statistics of graveyards of big cities,” the ministry said.
The death toll in Pakistan is verifiable and accepted globally. Several checks and balances exist on the reporting system and the additional deaths reported in cemeteries coincide with the COVID-19 waves that hit Pakistan, it concluded.
Meanwhile, former special assistant to the then prime minister on health Faisal Sultan said the WHO’s data on coronavirus deaths in Pakistan is “not reliable”.
He defended the government’s death report, saying a study of the number of cemeteries in major cities did not reveal a large number of victims of the pandemic.
Mr Sultan termed the figures “extremely sensitive” as it would reflect the handling of the crisis by authorities around the world.
“Our coronavirus death record was accurate but it is not possible to have 100% accurate death, it may be 10-30% lower but to say that it was eight times less is unbelievable,” he said.