Has the Covid pandemic made Indians older? A report has been published in the academic journal Science Advances which says so. After the release of this report, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has completely denied it. The report says that there has been a significant decline in the age of people in India during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The ministry has rejected the estimates of the study as “unsustainable and unacceptable”.
The report said that India saw a 2.6-year reduction in life expectancy from 2019 to 2020, with socially disadvantaged groups such as Muslims and Scheduled Tribes (STs) facing the most severe impact. The study claimed that women saw a greater decline (3.1 years) than men (2.1 years). However, the Health Ministry has criticized it.
The central government rejected it outright, know what it said
The ministry has asked how this estimate can be made by analysing only 23 per cent of the families of 14 states. The ministry has said that this data was collected during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The government said that death registrations increased by about 474,000 in 2020 compared to 2019, a trend that is consistent with previous years and is not solely attributable to the pandemic.
The government also contested the study’s findings on age and gender-related increase in mortality rates. Official data indicated that Covid-19 mortality was higher in men and older age groups, which contradicted the study’s claim that mortality was higher among younger individuals and women. “These inconsistent and ambiguous results in the published paper further undermine the confidence in its claims,” the ministry said.
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