Why India objects to WHO methodology of COVID death toll estimate?

April 19, 2022

The methodology that has been used by the World Health Organization (WHO) to estimate the COVID-19 related deaths in India has been objected to by India. The health ministry has issued a statement saying that for a large country like India, the same mathematical model cannot be used as it is used for countries with a smaller population.

Overview:

The statement issued by the health ministry is in response to an article published by the New York Times titled ‘India Is Stalling WHO’s Efforts to Make Global Covid Death Toll Public.’
According to the report of the WHO, a total of 15 million deaths have been estimated related to the virus by the end of 2021.
This is more than double the official figures that have been reported by countries individually.
The report also showed India’s death toll to be around 4 million which is almost eight times the official numbers released by the government.
The report’s release has been delayed as India has raised objections disputing the death calculations in the country.
India has objected to the methodology used for the calculations instead of the result of the report.
India has expressed with WHO the issues it has with the methodology through a series of formal communications.
India has also objected to the methodology of WHO that has been used to calculate the country’s age-sex death distribution in which the nation’s age-sex distribution of predicted deaths has been deduced based on the age-sex distribution of deaths reported by Israel, Costa Rica, Tunisia, and Paraguay.

Objections raised by other countries

Not only India, but other member states like Bangladesh, China, Syria, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Iran have also raised queries regarding the use of unofficial data sets and the methodology used to form this report.

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