By Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Amid controversy over undercounting of Covid-19 deaths, the Centre on Thursday yet reiterated that it has always advised states to conduct death audits in their hospitals and report any cases or deaths that could have been missed.
“India follows ICMR guidelines based on WHO-recommended ICD-10 codes for correct recording of all Covid-19 deaths,” the Centre said. About 4 lakh deaths have been confirmed due to Covid in India so far, but some researchers estimate the actual figure could be between 25-50 lakh.
In a statement, the Union health ministry said there have been reports citing findings from recent studies, in the US and European countries, in which age-specific fatality rates have been used to calculate excess deaths in India based on the seropositivity. The extrapolation of deaths has been done on an “audacious assumption that the likelihood of any given infected person dying is the same across countries, dismissing the interplay between various direct & indirect factors such as race, ethnicity, genomic constitution of a population, previous exposure levels to other disease,” it said.
Given the ‘robust and statute-based death registration system in India’, while some cases could go undetected as per the principles of infectious disease and its management, the Centre said missing out on deaths is unlikely. The Centre cited fatality rate, which on December 31 was 1.45% and after the second wave, is 1.34% now.