Centre denies report on Covid-19 death estimates

The Centre on Thursday trashed a The New York Times report on India's higher Covid-19 mortality by pointing out that the experts quoted in the report used elevated "infection fatality rate" (IFR), without any basis giving rise to such high mortality figures.

While the last nationwide serological survey carried out by the Indian Council of Medical Research in December-January produced an infection fatality rate of 0.05%, in all the three possible scenarios described in the NYT report, titled Just how big could India's true Covid toll be, the IFR was significantly higher without any basis.

IFR is calculated by dividing the number of deaths with the number of people, who were exposed to the virus as found in a serosurvey. IFR is always lower than the total fatality rate.

In the NYT report, the researchers calculated a “more likely scenario” leading to an estimated 1.6 million Covid-19 deaths, by using an IFR or 0.3%, which is six times more than the ICMR serosurvey findings.

Similarly in a “worse scenario” leading to 4.2 million estimated deaths, an IFR of 0.6% was used for the calculation, which is 12 times higher than the ICMR results. Even in the “conservative” scenario that leads to an estimated 600,000 deaths, an IFR value of 0.15% - still higher than ICMR results – was used.

"These are distorted estimates on mortality. We don’t accept this. The report should not have been published,” NITI Ayog member V K Paul, a former professor at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, in Delhi said.

As of Thursday, India recorded 3,15,235 Covid-19 deaths, of which 3,847 were added in the last 24 hours. "The report is completely baseless and absolutely false and not backed on any evidence," said Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the Union Health Ministry.

Over the past few months, several experts expressed doubts on India’s Covid-19 mortality data due to the flaws in the existing death registration system and poor public awareness because of which many in rural India don't even seek a death certificate. But nobody has proposed any estimate on what could be the missing Covid-19 mortality numbers.

Last week, the World Health Organisation reported that every country was facing a problem in reporting Covid-19 deaths and the actual number of such deaths could be two to three times more than the current global mortality of more than 34 lakh.