Centre rejects WHO's report which claims India's Covid death toll as highest in world

New Delhi: India has strongly objected to the World Health Organization (WHO)'s report released on Thursday that claimed several million Covid-19 deaths have most likely gone unreported in India.

According to WHO, over 4.7 million people in India - nearly 10 times higher than official records - are thought to have died because of the virus.

However, the Government said in a statement that WHO has released the excess mortality estimates without adequately addressing India's concerns.

World Health Organisation's use of the mathematical model to calculate the number of Covid deaths, saying the "figure is totally removed from reality".

Contending that the country has an "extremely robust" system of births and deaths registration, the Union health ministry, in its rebuttal, called the WHO's system of data collection "statistically unsound and scientifically questionable".

In a report released Thursday, WHO said between January 2020 and December 2021, there were 4.7 million "excess" Covid deaths in India -- the maximum number that's 10 times the official figures and almost a third of Covid deaths globally. The global figure, according to the report, was 15 million -- more than double the official figure of 6 million.

"India has consistently questioned WHO's own admission that data in respect of seventeen Indian states was obtained from some websites and media reports and was used in their mathematical model," the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said.

In its report WHO said, "Excess mortality is calculated as the difference between the number of deaths that have occurred and the number that would be expected in the absence of the pandemic based on data from earlier years".

WHO also said they chose the mathematical model as many countries "still lack capacity for reliable mortality surveillance and therefore do not collect and generate the data needed to calculate excess mortality".