(New Delhi) India is challenging the methodology of a forthcoming World Health Organization (WHO) study that puts a new toll of COVID-19 victims worldwide and revises the figure to at least four million. number of deaths in this country.
Posted at 8:45 a.m.
Official Indian figures show 520,000 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic, the third highest death toll in the world, behind the United States and Brazil.
According to New York Times (NYT) last week, New Delhi blocked the publication of a WHO study for several months, according to which this figure would be eight times higher.
Reacting to the article of NYTIndia’s health ministry argues the WHO’s mathematical modeling was “questionable” and “statistically unproven”, in a statement released over the weekend.
According to the ministry, India has raised its doubts through several official communications and meetings since November.
“A satisfactory response has not yet been received from WHO,” he added.
The WHO was not immediately available for comment.
The WHO study matches similar calculations published by the journal Lancet last month and to a study published in February in the journal Science which mentioned at least 3.2 million deaths from COVID-19 in India.
The Indian authorities had already challenged the methodology of the studies of the Lancet and of Science.
The country remains haunted by the terrible wave of COVID-19 in the spring of 2021. At the height of the pandemic, in May, India recorded more than 400,000 new infections and some 4,000 deaths per day.