'GROSS & MISLEADING': Centre rejects study claiming 11.9 lakh excess Covid deaths in India

The findings of a paper published in academic journal Science Advances on life expectancy during the Covid pandemic in India in 2020 are based on “untenable and unacceptable” estimates, the Union health ministry said on Saturday after the findings were highlighted in some media reports.

While the paper’s authors claim to have followed standard methodology of analysing the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5), there are critical flaws in the methodology, the ministry said in a statement.

“The most important flaw is that the authors have taken a subset of households included in the NFHS survey between January and April 2021, compared mortality in these households in 2020 with 2019, and extrapolated the results to the entire country,” it said.

The NFHS sample is representative of the country only when it is considered as a whole. The 23 per cent of households included in this analysis from part of 14 states cannot be considered representative of the country, the statement said.

“The other critical flaw is related to possible selection and reporting biases in the included sample due to the time in which these data were collected, at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic,” it said. It stated that the paper erroneously argues for the need for such analyses claiming that the vital registration system in low and middle income countries, including India, is weak.