The Indian government on Thursday refuted the New York Times report that said India has not been reporting its Covid number tolls accurately. The government asserted that the NYT report was “baseless and false”.
The NYT report had alleged that India has been downplaying its estimated Covid deaths. According to the report, the death toll in India due to Covid hit 42 lakh, in the worst-case scenario, 13.3 times less than the Indian government’s report of 3,15,235.
However, the government clarified that many estimates of “under-reported” deaths in India were based on assumptions lacking evidence.
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The NYT report titled “Just how big could India’s true Covid toll be” estimated 600,000 deaths due to the infection in the country in a conservative scenario, 16 lakh estimated deaths in a more likely scenario and 42 lakh estimated deaths in a worse scenario.
Niti Aayog member (health) Dr V K Paul said the report is based on “distorted estimates” that consider the government’s serosurvey findings for determining the infection spread but select an arbitrary number to calculate mortality rate for that incidence of infection.
“As per our estimates, infection fatality is 0.05% (calculated on findings of sero survey) and the case fatality rate is 1.15% (based on reported cases). When somebody attaches a number without thinking or understanding…they (NYT) are taking 0.3% IFR (infection fatality rate) which is six times 0.05% and (also) 0.6% is 12 times. On what basis? No basis at all,” Dr Paul was quoted as saying by the Times of India saying.
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The government’s annoyance was palpable, as Dr Paul and health ministry joint secretary Lav Agarwal questioned the basis of the report’s estimate. “The (NYT) estimates have been done ad hoc and without any basis; there are two parts — quoted cases is what percentage of viral infections. Because this virus infects a large number of people only some people get symptoms. This is well-known. There is a universe where the infection is not known — if it is to be ascertained, every day or every week the entire population needs to be tested…saying that the infection is 10-15 times of report, it doesn’t bother,” Dr Paul said. He pointed out that infection in US cities is also shown to be several times more than reported cases.
Infection fatality is the percentage of deaths out of the total number of people infected, whereas case fatality rate refers to the percentage of death based on reported cases.
