'WHO's mathematical modelling-based approach to estimate Covid deaths suffers from inconsistencies'

New Delhi: The mathematical modelling-based approach of the WHO to provide an estimate of COVID-19 deaths suffers from a number of inconsistencies and erroneous assumptions, the government told Parliament on Tuesday. In a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Health Anupriya Patel said the estimates of mortality figures as reported by the states and Union territories are not correlated with the estimates provided by the World Health Organization (WHO) or in the international medical journals.

Based on a mathematical-modelling exercise, the WHO has provided an estimate of deaths due to all causes that occurred between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021, including deaths due to Covid, Patel said.

"This mathematical modelling-based approach by WHO suffered from a number of inconsistencies and erroneous assumptions," she added.

Similar mathematical modelling-based projections on excess mortality estimates have been occasionally published in some international medical journals, Patel said.

According to the WHO's own admission and as indicated in the international medical journals, their modelling exercise suffers from a number of limitations like limited representation and generalisation of variable utilised to settings that may be systematically different, the minister said.

The Central Council of Health and Family Welfare, a representative body of health ministers from all the states and Union territories constituted under Article 263 of the Constitution, has passed a unanimous resolution against the WHO's approach in this regard and authorised the Union health minister to convey their collective disappointment to the global health body.

"Accordingly, India had registered a strong objection to the process, methodology and outcome of World Health Organization's approach used for estimation of excess mortality associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The various studies fail to acknowledge India's robust Civil Registration System (CRS), which recorded a substantial increase in death registrations (over 99 per cent) in 2020, not solely attributable to the pandemic," Patel said in her reply.

Since the coronavirus is still circulating, deaths due to it continue to be reported in the country, she pointed out.

Detailed guidelines for the reporting of Covid deaths have been issued by the Union health ministry to all the states and Union territories, the minister said, adding that the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), in accordance with the globally-accepted International Classification of Diseases-10 (ICD-10) classification, has issued the "Guidance for appropriate recording of COVID-19 related deaths in India".