WHO’s COVID MORTALITY REPORT

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Context - The Union Government has expressed concern over WHO’s Covid mortality report.

Details

A report published by WHO stated that there were nearly 47 lakh deaths, directly or indirectly related to COVID-19, in India in 2020 and 2021.
India officially estimated only 4.8 lakh deaths related to COVID-19 as of December 2021, which means that the WHO estimate is nearly 10 times the government official count.
India raised its “objection to the methodology” used.

WHO Methodology and concerns raised by the Indian Government

The Indian Government has objected to the World Health Organization methodology used for Calculating covid-19 mortality.
Concerns were raised by India along with China, Iran, Bangladesh, Syria, Ethiopia and Egypt, about the methodology and use of unofficial sets of data.
The main concern is about how the same statistical model could be used to estimate mortality in a larger country with a huge geographical size and the population also fits in with other countries which have smaller populations.
Indian government objected that ‘A one-size-fits-all approach and models which are true for smaller countries like Tunisia may not apply to India with a population of 1.3 billion,”
The Government of India highlighted that the WHO model assumed an inverse relationship between monthly temperature and monthly average deaths, which did not have any scientific backing.
The Indian Government has stated that India is always ready to collaborate with the WHO, but at the same time, India also believes that in-depth clarity on methodology and clear proof of its validity are crucial for policymakers to feel confident about any use of such data.