COVID-19 death figure: Indian government counters international media report, calls it 'speculative'

The government reacted to the article and said in a statement: "It is a speculative article, which is without any basis and seems to be misinformed."

"The unsound analysis of the said article is based on extrapolation of data without any epidemiological evidence. Studies which are used by the magazine as an estimate of excess mortality are not validated tools for determining mortality rate of any country or region," read the statement.

The so called “evidence” cited by the magazine is a study supposedly done by Christopher Laffler of Virginia Commonwealth University. An internet search of research studies in scientific database such Pubmed, Research Gate, etc., did not locate this study and the detailed methodology of this study has not been provided by the magazine, the statement said.

"Another evidence given is the study done in Telengana based on insurance claims. Again, there is no peer reviewed scientific data available on suchstudy," the Indian government said.

"Two other studies relied upon are those done by Psephology groups namely “Prashnam” and “C-Voter” who are well versed in conducting, predicting and analysing poll results. They were never ever associated with public health research. Even in their own area of work of psephology, their methodologies for predicting poll results have been wide off the mark many times," it said.

The Union Government said it has been transparent in its approach to COVID data management.

"It’s a well-known fact that there shall always be difference in mortality recorded during a profound and prolonged public health crisis such as COVID pandemic and well conducted research studies on excess mortalities, usually done after the event when data on mortalities are available from reliable sources. The methodologies for such studies are well established, the data sources are defined as also the valid assumptions for computing mortality," the statement said.

India has reported 84,332 Daily New Cases in the last 24 hours.The country has recorded less than 1 lakh Daily New Cases for 5 continuous days now.

India has been witnessing a continuous fall in the active caseload.The country’s Active Caseload today stands at 10,80,690. The Caseload is maintained below 20 lakhs for twelve successive days.

A net decline of 40,981 is witnessed in the last 24 hours and active cases are now only 3.68%of the country's total Positive Cases.

As more people are getting recovered from COVID infection, India’s Daily Recoveries continue to outnumber the Daily New Cases for the 30th consecutive day. 1,21,311 recoveries were registered in the last 24 hours.

36,979 more recoveries were reported during the last 24 hours as compared to the daily new cases.

While on one side testing has been enhanced across the country, a continued decline in weekly case positivity is noticed. Weekly Positivity Rate is currently at 4.94% while the Daily Positivity rate stands at 4.39% today. It has remained less than 10% for 19 consecutive days now.