WHO's data and Congress' beta are wrong, says BJP; accuses Rahul Gandhi of doing politics over COVID-19 deaths

New Delhi: The BJP on Friday accused Congress leader Rahul Gandhi of doing politics over COVID-19 deaths, alleging that the WHO’s data and Congress’ “beta” (son) are wrong. At a press conference, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Sambit Patra said the World Health Organization’s (WHO) methodology to calculate estimated deaths in India due to the virus is “flawed” and the Indian government had conveyed its objections to the organisation. Rahul Gandhi has tried repeatedly to lower Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s image since 2014 and has in the process lowered India’s image, Patra said. India has a robust mechanism for birth and death registration, he added. “The WHO’s data and the Congress’ beta are wrong,” he alleged. Rahul Gandhi had earlier attacked the government over a WHO report which claimed there were 4.7 million COVID-19 deaths in India, saying “science does not lie, Prime Minister Narendra Modi does”. Rahul Gandhi also demanded that the government should support the families that have lost loved ones by giving them the mandated Rs four lakh compensation. Meanwhile, top health experts of India have expressed disappointment over WHO’s “one-size-fits-all” approach to arrive at the figure. Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Director General Balram Bhargava, NITI Aayog Member (Health) V K Paul, AIIMS Director Randeep Guleria and NTAGI’s COVID-19 Working Group Chairman Dr N K Arora on Thursday rejected the global health body’s report as “untenable and unfortunate”. In its report released on Thursday, WHO estimated that nearly 15 million people were killed either by the coronavirus or by its impact on the overwhelmed health systems in the past two years, more than double the official death toll of six million. Most of the fatalities were in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas. According to the report, there were 4.7 million Covid deaths in India – 10 times the official figures and almost a third of Covid deaths globally. Rejecting it, Dr V K Paul said India has been telling WHO with all humility through diplomatic channels along with data and rational reasoning that it does not agree with the methodology that has been followed for the country. They have used a methodology for several nations which is based on a systematic collection of data on deaths. The NTAGI’s COVID-19 Working Group Chairman, Dr N K Arora, described the WHO report as very unfortunate. “India has performed unexpectedly well in COVID-19 management. In fact, many prestigious journals in the world had predicted doom for India. They (WHO) thought India will just collapse both as a nation as well as an economy and as a health system. But it never happened because we as a country came together and managed it very well,” he added. Dr Arora said India’s mortality per million is among the lowest compared to many advanced nations. Dr Balram Bhargava said there was no definition of COVID deaths. “Even WHO did not have any definition for death… So, we looked at all the data that we had and we concluded that 95 per cent of the deaths that occurred after testing positive for COVID-19 were occurring in the first four weeks. So a 30-day cut-off was given for the definition of death,” he said. Rejecting WHO’s report, Dr Randeep Guleria said, “I’ll give three broad reasons for that. One is that India has a very robust system of birth and death registration and that data is available. WHO has not used that data. The second important issue is the data that WHO used is more hearsay evidence or what has been there in the media or from unconfirmed sources. That data itself is questionable. To do modelling on that data is not correct and it’s not scientifically the right, especially when you have data,” he said. Another issue is that India has been very liberal in offering compensation to people who have died from COVID-19 and that has been there in a very open manner, Dr Guleria said. “So, even if there were excess COVID-related deaths, they would have been recorded because people would have come forward for compensation,” he added. Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.