Delhi COVID-19 numbers authentic, correct: Health minister Satyendar Jain

Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain stated on Friday that Delhi's COVID-19 numbers are authentic and correct and not a single death has gone unaccounted. Jain's comments come a day after the central government strongly rejected WHO's recent report which stated that 4.7 million died in India due to COVID-19, 

"Almost 25,600 deaths have taken place and each of them has been counted. In Delhi, the data has not been fudged even for a single death," said Jain, reported new agency ANI. 

On Thursday, the Centre had objected to the methodology adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) to project excess mortality estimates related to COVID-19 based on mathematical models globally. It said that the validity and robustness of the models are questionable.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare maintained that the data published through the Civil Registration System (CRS) by the Registrar General of India (RGI) is authentic and reliable to project excess mortality numbers for India. 

"The Civil Registration data, as well as Sample Registration data released annually by RGI, has been used by a large number of researchers, policymakers and scientists both domestically & globally," the ministry said in a statement.

The WHO report estimates that there were 4.7 million COVID deaths in India -- 10 times more than the official figures and almost a third of COVID deaths globally. WHO report said that nearly 15 million people were killed either by the coronavirus or by its impact on overwhelmed health systems in the past two years, more than double the official death count of 6 million. Most of the fatalities were in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas, as per the WHO report.

The country's top health experts on Thursday questioned the modelling methodology used by the WHO. ICMR Director General Balram Bhargava, NITI Aayog Member (Health) V K Paul and AIIMS Director Randeep Guleria rejected the report as untenable and unfortunate. 

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