New Delhi objected to the approach adopted in a study expected to be issued by the World Health Organization on the new death toll from Corona in the world, and raised the number of deaths in India to at least four million.
According to official figures issued by the Indian authorities, the Corona pandemic has killed 520,000 people, which is the third highest death toll in the world after the United States and Brazil.
The body of a deceased person with corona was transported in New Delhi last February
And the newspaper “New York Times” reported last week that India is trying to prevent the issuance of a study by the World Health Organization that considers the actual number of corona deaths in it to be eight times higher than the announced numbers.
Commenting on the article published in the newspaper, the Indian Ministry of Health said in a statement published at the end of the week that the computational modeling approach adopted by the organization is “disputable” and “statistically unproven”.
According to the ministry, India has expressed skepticism about this study in several official letters and meetings since November.
The statement stressed that the ministry had not yet received a “full answer from the World Health Organization.”
The body of a deceased person from Corona was transported in Ahmedabad last February
The WHO study is based on calculations similar to those used in The Lancet last month and a study published in February in the journal Science that looked at at least 3.2 million deaths from corona in India.
The Indian authorities objected to the method used in the “Lancet” and “Science” studies.
The country is still reeling from the shock of the Corona wave in the spring of 2021. At the height of that wave in May, India recorded more than 400,000 new infections and about 4,000 deaths per day.