NEW DELHI: India on Saturday questioned the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) methodology to estimate the COVID-19 death toll in the country, stating that the same mathematical model cannot be used to estimate the mortalities of a country like India which has a large geographical size and population. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said that India has shared its concerns with the methodology along with the other Member States through a series of formal communications including six letters issued to WHO. The concern specifically includes how the statistical model projects estimates for a country of geographical size and population of India and also fits in with other countries which have a smaller population. The ministry in a statement in response to a New York Times article titled “India Is Stalling WHO’s Efforts to Make Global COVID Death Toll Public” dated April 16, said, “India has been in regular and in-depth technical exchange with World Health Organisation (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.” During these exchanges, specific queries have been raised by India along with the other Member States e.g. China, Iran, Bangladesh, Syria, Ethiopia and Egypt regarding the methodology, and use of unofficial sets of data.“The concern specifically includes how the statistical model projects estimates for a country of geographical size and population of India and also fits in with other countries which have a smaller populations. Such size fits 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,” it said adding that the WHO is yet to share the confidence interval for the present statistical model across various countries. The Ministry said that the model gives two highly different sets of excess mortality estimates when using the data from Tier I countries and when using unverified data from 18 Indian States. “Such wide variation in estimates raises concerns about validity and accuracy of such a modelling exercise,” it added. “India has asserted that if the model is accurate and reliable, it should be authenticated by running it for all Tier I countries and if the result of such exercise may be shared with all Member States,” the Health Ministry said. The Ministry further said that the model assumes an inverse relationship between monthly temperature and monthly average deaths, which does not have any scientific backing to establish such a peculiar empirical relationship. India is a country of continental proportions climatic and seasonal conditions vary vastly across different states and even within a state and therefore, all states have widely varied seasonal patterns. “Thus, estimating
