WHO Covid-19 death estimates have no scientific basis: Expert

NEW DELHI: The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Covid-19 death estimates are based on modelling which has no scientific or epidemiological basis, claimed senior epidemiologist at AIIMS Delhi, Dr Sanjay Rai.

“WHO gave an estimate on modelling, the basic epidemiological principle is ignored. During Covid-19, most predictions happened based on modelling and mostly failed. There is no scientific basis for this. WHO estimation is far from the truth,” Dr Rai told ANI on Friday.

The AIIMS epidemiologist also remarked that the Government of India’s data is better than other countries and said that the under-reporting allegation of Covid-19 cases is wrong.

“There were several deaths which took place during Covid-19 lockdown and excess death could have taken place as services were closed. There were many terminally ill patients who couldn’t access healthcare. But you can’t prove that death as Covid-19 death,” Rai added.

According to him, the deaths in India could be an overestimation rather than an underestimation. He said that if a terminally ill cancer patient died during the pandemic and was infected with Covid-19, then it was included in the Covid death tally.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday released its much-awaited report on excess death estimates for the world during the two pandemic years, showing more than 4.74 million (47.4 lakh) such deaths in India — nearly 10 times higher than the country’s official covid death toll.