-The New Indian Express The government needs to understand that better official statistics are required not just to counter estimates by global agencies. It is required for better policymaking. The government is upset with the estimates of the World Health Organisation (WHO) about how many Indians died because of the pandemic. India’s official Covid-19 death count in 2020 and 2021 is 481,000. The WHO puts India’s death toll at 4.7 million till...
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How COVID-19 Worsened Hardships of India’s Domestic Workers -Romita Saluja
-TheWire.in/ Undark.org Under the pretext of COVID-19 safety, employers have tightened restrictions on live-in domestic workers in India. On a typical humid Sunday afternoon in July, Soni Tirki would be polishing off the chicken and rice that her mother makes every time the 20-year-old returns home. “I sit at ease and enjoy my meal,” Tirki says. “I eat however much I want. Nobody can stop me. Nobody can judge me.” But on this...
More »Why the COVID-19 numbers matter -Jagdish Rattanani and T Jacob John
-The Hindu Reporting every death with the accurate and verifiable cause of death is essential for public health The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated the number of deaths in India directly or indirectly attributable to COVID-19 to be 4.74 million. This is the highest for any country and nine times the nation’s official count of 5,24,000 as of May 2022. The WHO numbers are derived through robust statistical methods that consider...
More »Union health ministry’s survey puts question mark on death data -GS Mudur
-The Telegraph Civil Registration System figures are closest to the truth and should be considered authentic, say officials The Union health ministry’s National Family Health Survey 2019-21 has suggested that India’s births-and-deaths recording system registered only 71 per cent of the country’s deaths over the preceding three years, significantly lower than the 99.9 per cent cited by the ministry for 2020. The gap between the two numbers and the exceedingly high proportion of...
More »A deep dive into WHO report on Covid deaths in India and why govt opposes it -Sharmita Kar
-Hindustan Times The WHO said it developed an ‘innovative’ and ‘robust’ methodology for its findings that are completely transparent. The Centre said all its letters seeking a clarification were met with a lukewarm response. A controversy has erupted over a World Health Organization (WHO) report, released a day ago, claiming that Covid-19 deaths in India were nearly 10 times the figures reported by the government, a statement vehemently rejected by the Centre. The...
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