Research paper claiming high Covid deaths fallacious & inaccurate, says Centre

A research paper published by French demographer Christophe Guilmoto claimed that 32-37 lakh people died due to Covid-19 by last November, as compared to the official figures of 4.6 lakh

The Centre on Thursday denied reports of the country's covid-19 death counting being much higher than the official figures, calling them fallacious and completely inaccurate.

Picture for representational purpose(HT/Sakib Ali)

"The study estimates 32-37 lakh people died from COVID19 by early Nov 2021 in the country, as compared to official figures of Nov 2021 which stood at 4.6 lakh.They are not based on facts and are speculative in nature," the government said in response to the research paper published by French demographer Christophe Guilmoto who claimed that the country's covid-19 fatalities could be much higher.

Rubbishing the study which took four distinct supopulations including Kerala, Railways employees, MPs and MLAs as well as school teachers from KArnataka to estimate the nationwide deaths, the Centre said that India has a robust system of reporting deaths including Covid-19 fatalities that is compiled regularly at all levels of governance.

"This exercise runs the risk of mapping skewed data of outliers together and is bound to give wrong estimations thereby leading to fallacious conclusions. The sheer justification that the study has credence since its findings/estimates are in convergence with another study is baffling, defies logic and highlights the bias with which the article has been written."

"The reporting of deaths is regularly done in a transparent manner. All deaths are compiled by the Centre after being independently reported by States. Based on globally acceptable categorization, the government has a comprehensive definition to classify COVID deaths which has been shared with the States and the States are following it," the government asserted.

Denying a lapse in India's civil registration system that could be vulnerable to recording deaths, the Centre said it already has a robust and completely transparent system to record covid-19 deaths. "To avoid inconsistency in number of deaths being reported, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has issued guidelines. The date of cases and deaths due to COVID19 are being put in public domain on a daily basis since start of the pandemic."