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Updated September 17th, 2021 at 13:05 IST

Congress allege Centre underreported COVID deaths in country during second wave

The Congress Party has accused the Union government on Thursday that the centre has grossly underreported deaths that occurred during the deadly second wave

Reported by: Aayush Anandan
Congress
IMAGE: AP | Image:self
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The Congress Party has accused the Union government on Thursday saying that the centre has grossly underreported deaths that occurred during the deadly second wave of the COVID-19 infection. According to a report published in a periodical, the Congress party allegedly claimed that on the basis of the report, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) manipulated the data and heavily underreported COVID-related deaths during the period.

Ajay Maken, a senior spokesperson of the Congress party, said on Thursday that several senior scientists who worked with the ICMR during the second wave of the pandemic have started to come forward to disclose these irregularities in the managing of the pandemic. Maken further said that the scientists have also hinted a possible political interference for tampering with the COVID-19 data at the ICMR database.

While talking about the number of deaths, Maken cited the periodical and said that the government’s official tally of 4,43,497 COVID-19 deaths was wrong. He said, "The number of actual deaths is around 43 lakh or maybe as high as 68 lakhs." He further said, "Now more scientists, who have worked with the Indian Council of Medical Research, are coming forward with startling facts of political interference and arrogance. This is not only against science and democracy but also caused millions of preventable deaths.”

What did the research say?

Recently, research was conducted by professionals from the University of Michigan, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata and Delhi School of Economics. They developed their own estimate model and concluded that India may have lost 1.7 to 4.9 million people due to the Coronavirus. The official tally of COVID-19 deaths as per the Union Health Ministry is slightly above 400,000. The study also said that COVID-19 cases were also under-reported 25 to 30 times. The researchers developed another model to calculate the economic cost of the deaths due to COVID-19 and concluded that the deaths will highly impact the economic decisions of the government. The research found out that the economic cost would be at least 31% of the GDP.

(With ANI inputs)

(Image: AP)

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Published September 17th, 2021 at 13:05 IST

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