Media reports claiming COVID-19 mortality higher than official counts are 'fallacious and inaccurate': Health Ministry

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Thursday denied media reports alleging that mortality due to COVID-19 in India is much higher than the official count and said that fallacious and completely inaccurate, adding that, they are based on speculation and not facts.

"There have been some media reports based on a published research paper. The study estimates that people between 3.2 million to 3.7 million have died from COVID-19 by early November 2021 in the country, as compared to official figures of Nov 2021 of 0.46 million (4.6 lakhs)," read the official statement.

According to the release, India has a robust system of reporting deaths including COVID-19 deaths that is compiled regularly at different levels of governance starting from the Gram Panchayat level to the District level and State level. The reporting of deaths is regularly done in a transparent manner. All deaths are compiled by the Centre after being independently reported by States.

The study quoted in the media reports has taken four distinct subpopulations -- the population of Kerala, Indian Railways employees, MLAs and MPs, and school teachers in Karnataka, and uses the triangulation process to estimate nationwide deaths. Any such projections based on limited data sets and certain specific assumptions must be treated with extreme care before extrapolating the numbers by putting all states and countries of the size of India in a single envelope.

This exercise runs the risk of mapping skewed data of outliers together and is bound to give wrong estimations thereby leading to fallacious conclusions.

The sheer justification that the study has credence since its findings/estimates are in convergence with another study is baffling, defies logic and highlights the bias with which the article has been written.

The media reports further claim that "Experts believe India's civil registration system is vulnerable to gaps. The current civil registration system has little interoperability with health information systems, there is potential for gaps in recording of deaths." It is reiterated that the Union Government has followed a transparent approach regarding COVID data management and a robust system of recording all COVID-19 related deaths already exists.

In order to avoid inconsistency in the number of deaths being reported, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has issued 'Guidance for the appropriate recording of COVID-19 related deaths in India' for correct recording of all deaths as per ICD-10 codes recommended by World Health Organisation (WHO). The date of cases and deaths due to COVID19 are being put in the public domain on a daily basis since the start of the pandemic, and similarly, all states, including districts, are releasing regular bulletins with all details on a daily basis which is also in the public domain.

It is an established fact that there shall always be differences in mortality recorded during a profound and prolonged public health crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic and well-conducted research studies on mortalities are usually done after the event when data on mortalities are available from reliable sources.

The methodologies for such studies are well established, the data sources are defined as also the valid assumptions for computing mortality.

In the case of analysis of COVID19 mortality in India, it must be noted that there is added push in India to capture and report all COVID19 deaths due to the entitlement to monetary compensation to the next of kin of each and every COVID19 deceased person.

(ANI)