India challenges WHO’s ‘one shoe fits all’ approach to COVID death toll

India’s Union Health Ministry challenged the latest report from the World Health Organization that was centered around the methodology for estimating the total COVID-19-related deaths.

The report from the World Health Organization was boosted by the New York Times claimed that the death toll estimate would cross four million in India, which is nearly eight times the official figure. The NYT report was titled “India Is Stalling WHO’s Efforts To Make Global COVID Death Toll Public.”

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India objected to the “one shoe fits all” approach of the World Health Organization and said that the same mathematical models can not be used to calculate the death toll for all countries. 

“The concern specifically includes how the statistical model projects estimates for a country of geographical size & population of India and also fits in with other countries which have smaller population”, the Union Health Ministry said in a statement.

The Ministry added, “Such one size fit 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. WHO is yet to share the confidence interval for the present statistical model across various countries”, Hindustan Times reported.

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The Global Health Estimates (GHE) 2019 on which the modeling for Tier II countries is based, is itself an estimate. The present modeling exercise seems to be providing its own set of estimates based on another set of historic estimates, while disregarding the data available with the country, the statement said.

“It is not clear as to why GHE 2019 has been used for estimating expected death figures for India, whereas, for the Tier 1 countries, their own historical datasets were used when it has been repeatedly highlighted that India has a robust system of data collection and management,” the statement read.