News Desk, AnyTV, London/New Delhi
Published by: Amit Mandal
Updated Fri, 11 Mar 2022 06:34 PM IST
Summary
The Union Health Ministry on Friday termed the analysis as “misinformation” and acknowledged its methodology flaws and inconsistencies.
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According to a new analysis in the Lancet, India’s estimated number of deaths due to COVID-19 between January 2020 and December 2021 was the highest in the world at 40 lakh seven thousand. This number is almost eight times higher than the stated figure. Responding to this, the Union Health Ministry on Friday termed the analysis as “misinformation” and said its authors themselves admitted several methodological flaws and discrepancies.
Government rejected the report
In a statement, the ministry said the Lancet study takes into account the different approaches for different countries. For example, the data sources used by the study in India seem to be derived from newspaper reports and non-peer-reviewed studies. The ministry said that this model uses data on excess mortality from all causes as an input and it raises serious questions about the accuracy of the results of this statistical exercise.
The Lancet reported on Thursday that Indian states do not have the highest death rate due to COVID in the world due to India’s large population, but the country accounted for about 22.3 per cent of the global excess deaths as of December 31, 2021. The analysis forecasts higher death rates from the COVID-19 pandemic in 191 countries and territories from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2021.
4.89 lakh deaths were reported
However, the total number of deaths due to COVID-19 in that period was 50 lakh 94 thousand worldwide. The Lancet paper estimates that 18 million people died worldwide due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as estimated from the additional mortality during that period. This is almost three times more than the earlier estimate. The journal said in the paper that during that period, the deaths due to COVID in India were reported to be around 4,89,000.
The excess mortality rate usually measures the additional deaths over a given time period compared to the expected number and is not dependent on how the COVID-19 deaths are recorded. For India, the assessment of excess mortality for 12 states used data from the Civil Registration System. It said, using the average reported deaths during the same period in the years 2018 and 2019, we are able to record additional mortality rates for Indian states after accounting for under-registration of mortality by the civil registration system at the state level. were able to.