The World Health Organization (WHO) recently released a report that estimated global deaths from COVID-19 across 2020-2021. It suggested that about 14.9 million deaths could be attributed to the pandemic worldwide during that period, further estimating that about 4.7 million of these deaths were in India alone. For comparison, the official Indian COVID-19 toll for that period is 0.48 million, a number smaller than the WHO number by a factor of about 10.
A number of independent news reports have suggested that there was pressure from the Indian government on the WHO to suppress their estimates. Indeed, once the report appeared, it was immediately criticised by a number of prominent government representatives. A government press release called the report “statistically unsound and scientifically questionable”.
India’s rejection of the report makes it the only country to do so, out of the 194 member states of the WHO. However, the estimates for India are broadly consistent with estimates from a number of independent groups, all falling in the broad range of 2.2 million to 6 million deaths.
