The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has rejected the findings of a study published in the journal Science Advances on the reduction of life expectancy in India in 2020 by stating that the study is erroneous. The ministry also stated that the media reports highlighting excess mortality in 2020 are based on untenable and unacceptable estimates.
The ministry said that the methodology followed by the authors has critical flaws and the claims are inconsistent. The study has failed to acknowledge India’s civil registration system (CRS), which recorded an increase in death registrations, over 99 per cent, in 2020 which were not solely attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic, the ministry said in its press release.
To put things in context, a study published in Science Advances proposed that India’s life expectancy declined by 2.6 years from 2019 to 2020. It also highlighted that marginalised social groups faced the greatest losses and females witnessed a more substantial decline of 3.1 years compared to 2.1 years for males.
According to the ministry, Authors have taken only a subset of the households included in the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5) between January and April 2021 and have compared the mortality in these households in 2019 and 2020. The ministry stated that the NFHS sample represents the country only when taken as a whole. The 23 per cent of households included in the study cannot be considered representative of the country.
The ministry also criticised the study for possible selection and reporting biases by stating that the data was collected during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The CRS data observed that death registrations rose by about 4,74,000 in 2020 as compared to 2019, aligning with the patterns from 2018 and 2019. The ministry added that the excess number is due to the increasing trend of death registration in CRS and cannot be attributed solely to the pandemic.
The sample registration system (SRS), which covers 24 lakh households, reported minimal to no excess mortality in 2020 compared to 2019.
The official data of Covid-19 deaths shows higher mortality in males than females and in older age groups, the ministry pointed this out while challenging the study’s claims. It said, “These inconsistent and unexplainable results in the published paper reduce any confidence in its claims.”
