Union Health Ministry contests international study that points to 11.9 lakh excess deaths in India in 2020, calls it ‘gross and misleading’ overestimate
The Hindu
Union Health Ministry contests findings of excess deaths during Covid-19 pandemic in India, citing flawed methodology and estimates.
Even as data from an international study emerged, estimating that 11.19 lakh excess deaths occurred in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic in India, and that life expectancy among Indian men and women fell, the Union Health Ministry on Saturday, July 20, 2024, issued a statement contesting these findings and, stating that they were based on “untenable and unacceptable” estimates.
While the paper’s authors claim to have followed a standard methodology of analysing National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5) data, the Ministry said there were “critical flaws” in the methodology.
According to the paper, ‘Large and unequal life expectancy declines during the COVID-19 pandemic in India in 2020’, published in the journal Science Advances, 11.9 lakh excess deaths occurred in 2020 in the country during the pandemic, 17 per cent higher compared to the deaths in 2019. Their estimate is about eight times higher than the official COVID-19 deaths in India, and 1.5 times the World Health Organisation's estimates, researchers, including those from the University of Oxford, UK, said.
Using data of over 7.65 lakh individuals, the study also estimated changes in life expectancy at birth, by gender and social group between 2019 and 2020 in India. The data was taken from the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5).
According to the study, the life expectancy in women fell by 3.1 years, while it fell by 2.1 years in men, the authors said. Gender inequalities in healthcare and resource distribution within households could be possible reasons, they said. These patterns contrast with those seen in high-income countries, where excess deaths were higher among men than women during the pandemic, the authors pointed out.
However, the Health Ministry, in its statement said: “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.” 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.