'Erroneous, misleading': Centre rejects study claiming 11.9 lakh excess Covid-19 deaths in India

NEW DELHI: The Union health ministry has criticized a recent study published in the US-based academic journal Science Advances., which claimed that India experienced significant excess mortality during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, terming it "erroneous" in nature.
The study claimed that India experienced 17 per cent higher or 1.19 million more deaths in 2020 than the previous year, which is eight times higher than the official number of Covid deaths in India and 1.5 times higher than the World Health Organization's estimates.
The ministry stated that the study's estimates are "untenable and unacceptable" and that the methodology used by the authors has critical flaws.
One of the main issues raised by the ministry is that the authors used a subset of households from the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5) conducted between January and April 2021, comparing mortality rates in these households in 2020 with those in 2019, and then extrapolated the results to the entire country.
"The paper published today is methodologically flawed and shows results that are untenable and unacceptable," the statement said.
The ministry argued that the NFHS sample is only representative of the country when considered as a whole, and the 23% of households included in the analysis from 14 states cannot be considered representative of the entire nation.
Another critical flaw highlighted by the ministry is the potential selection and reporting biases in the sample due to the timing of data collection, which coincided with the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The ministry also refuted the paper's claim that the vital registration system in low and middle-income countries, including India, is weak. The ministry stated that India's Civil Registration System (CRS) is highly robust, capturing over 99% of deaths, with reporting consistently increasing from 75% in 2015 to over 99% in 2020.
The ministry further noted that the excess deaths reported in the CRS are not solely attributable to the pandemic, as the increase in death registration is also due to an increasing trend in CRS coverage and a larger population base in the succeeding year.
"It is strongly asserted that an excess mortality of about 11.9 lakh deaths reported in the 'Science Advances' paper in 2020 over the previous year is a gross and misleading overestimate," the statement said.
The ministry also pointed out that the paper's results on age and sex are contrary to research and program data on Covid-19 in India.
The paper claimed that excess mortality was greater in females and younger age groups, particularly children aged 0-19 years. However, data on recorded Covid-19 deaths and research from cohorts and registries consistently show higher mortality in males than females (2:1) and in older age groups.
The ministry stated that the all-cause excess mortality in India in 2020 compared to the previous year is markedly less than the 11.9 lakh deaths reported in the Science Advances paper.