NYT claims on India's covid-19 death toll create stir

New Delhi: The recent reports published in the New York Times having large claims of a WHO report on the death toll in India due to COVID-19 has indeed created a stir, drawing a sharp response from the government.

According to the report, the global death toll from the pandemic has found that vastly more people died than previously believed -- a total of about 15 million by the end of 2021, more than double the official total of six million reported by countries individually.

But the release of the staggering estimate has been delayed for months because of objections from India, which disputes the calculation of how many of its citizens died and has tried to keep it from becoming public, the report said.

More than a third of the additional nine million deaths are estimated to have occurred in India, where the government has stood by its own count of about 520,000, it added.

The WHO will show the country's toll is at least four million, according to people familiar with the numbers who were not authorised to disclose them, which would give India the highest tally in the world, they said.

The Times was unable to learn the estimates for other countries.

The WHO calculation combined national data on reported deaths with new information from localities and household surveys, and with statistical models that aim to account for deaths that were missed.

Most of the difference in the new global estimate represents previously uncounted deaths, the bulk of which were directly from Covid; the new number also includes indirect deaths, like those of people unable to access care for other ailments because of the pandemic.

The delay in releasing the figures is significant because the global data is essential for understanding how the pandemic has played out and what steps could mitigate a similar crisis in the future.

According to the report, India has not submitted its total mortality data to the WHO for the past two years, but the organisation's researchers have used numbers gathered from at least 12 states.

Jon Wakefield, a professor of statistics and biostatistics at the University of Washington who played a key role in building the model used for the estimates, said an initial presentation of the WHO global data was ready in December.

"But then India was unhappy with the estimates. So then we've subsequently done all sorts of sensitivity analyses, the paper's actually a lot better because of this wait because we've gone overboard in terms of model checks and doing as much as we possibly can given the data that's available," Wakefield said.

India Rebutts all NYT claims by sharing its concerns with the methodology along with other member states through a series of formal communications, including six letters issued to the World Health Organisation, the Union Health Ministry said.

The reaction came in response to New York Times article titled "India Is Stalling the WHO's Efforts to Make Global Covid Death Toll Public" dated April 16, 2022.

"India has been in regular and in-depth technical exchange with WHO on the issue. The analysis while uses mortality figures directly obtained from Tier -I set of countries, uses a mathematical modelling process for Tier II countries (which includes India). India's basic objection has not been with the result (whatever they might have been) but rather the methodology adopted for the same", the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry has raised the question on how the statistical model projects estimates for a country of geographical size & population of India and also fits in with other countries which have smaller population. Such one size fit all approach and models which are true for smaller countries like Tunisia may not be applicable to India with a population of 1.3 billion. WHO is yet to share the confidence interval for the present statistical model across various countries, said the ministry.

"The model gives two highly different sets of excess mortality estimates of when using the data from Tier I countries and when using unverified data from 18 Indian states. Such a wide variation in estimates raises concerns about validity and accuracy of such a modelling exercise", it stated.

India is a country of continental proportions, climatic and seasonal conditions vary vastly across different states and even within a state therefore, all states have widely varied seasonal patterns. "Thus, estimating national level mortality based on these 18 states' data is statistically unproven," the statement stated.

It said further that the Global Health Estimates (GHE) 2019 on which the modeling for Tier II countries is based, is itself an estimate. The present modeling exercise seems to be providing its own set of estimates based on another set of historic estimates while disregarding the data available with the country. It is not clear as to why GHE 2019 has been used for estimating expected deaths figures for India, whereas, for the Tier 1 countries, their own historical datasets were used when it has been repeatedly highlighted that India has a robust system of data collection and management.

"It is not clear as to why GHE 2019 has been used for estimating expected death figures for India, whereas, for the Tier 1 countries, their own historical datasets were used when it has been repeatedly highlighted that India has a robust system of data collection and management," it stated.

In order to calculate the age-sex death distribution for India, WHO determined standard patterns for age and sex for the countries with reported data (61 countries) and then generalised them to the other countries (incl. India) who had no such distribution in their mortality data.

Based on this approach, India's age-sex distribution of predicted deaths was extrapolated based on the age-sex distribution of deaths reported by four countries (Costa Rica, Israel, Paraguay, and Tunisia), the ministry said in the statement.

Of the covariates used for analysis, a binary measure for income has been used instead of a more realistic graded variable. Using a binary variable for such an important measure may lend itself to amplifying the magnitude of the variable. WHO has conveyed that a combination of these variables was found to be most accurate for predicting excess mortality for a sample of 90 countries and 18 months (January 2020-June 2021). The detailed justification of how the combination of these variables is found to be most accurate is yet to be provided by WHO, the statement noted.

"The test positivity rate for Covid in India was never uniform throughout the country at any point of time. But, this variation in Covid positivity rate within India was not considered for modelling purposes," it said.

"Further, India has undertaken COVID-19 testing at a much faster rate than what WHO has advised. India has maintained molecular testing as preferred testing methods and used Rapid Antigen as screening purpose only. Whether these factors have been used in the model for India is still unanswered," the statement stated.

Containment involves a lot of subjective approach (such as school closing, workplace closing, cancelling of public events) to quantify itself. But, it is actually impossible to quantify various measures of containment in such a manner for a country like India, as the strictness of such measures have varied widely even among the states and districts of India. Therefore, the approach followed in this process is very much questionable, it said.

"In addition, subjective approach to quantify such measures will always involve a lot of biasness which will surely not present the real situation. WHO has also agreed about the subjective approach of this measure. However, it is still used," the statement said.

According to the statement, during interactions with WHO, it has also been highlighted that some fluctuations in official reporting of COVID-19 data from some of the Tier I countries, including the US, Germany, France, defied knowledge of disease epidemiology.

Further inclusion of a country like Iraq which is undergoing an extended complex emergency under Tier I countries raises doubts on WHO's assessment in categorisation of countries as Tier I/II and its assertion on quality of mortality reporting from these countries. 

"While India has remained open to collaborate with WHO as data sets like these will be helpful from the policy making point of view, India believes that in-depth clarity on methodology and clear proof of its validity are crucial for policy makers to feel confident about any use of such data.," the statement said.

"It is very surprising that while New York Times purportedly could obtain the alleged figures of excess COVID-19 mortality in respect to India, it was unable to learn the estimates for other countries!" the statement added.