New Delhi, May 9 (PTI) Indian Youth Congress (IYC) activists on Monday staged a protest at Jantar Mantar here, seeking clarification from the Centre over the World Health Organization’s report on COVID-19 deaths in the country.
The youth wing of the Congress accused the BJP-led central government of “hiding” the actual Covid-related death toll from the people to “hide its failures”.
“The figures given by WHO have been calculated on a scientific basis and the figures given by the government, on what basis they have been calculated, only the Modi government can tell,” Srinivas BV, National President of IYC, said.
He demanded that the government should give financial compensation of Rs 4 lakh to the families of those who died during the pandemic and also demanded the immediate establishment of a ‘Covid Commission’.
Several youth Congress workers, including IYC’s national media in-charge Rahul Rao, national secretary and Delhi co-in-charge Khushboo Sharma, Delhi Youth Congress state president Ranvijay Singh Lochav, took part in the protest.
Rao said the Narendra Modi government’s assessment of the number of Covid deaths is the “height of falsehood”.
According to the WHO report, there were 4.7 million Covid deaths in India — 10 times the official figure and almost a third of Covid deaths globally.
It estimated that nearly 15 million people were killed either by coronavirus or by its impact on overwhelmed health systems in the last two years, more than double the official death toll of six million. Most of the fatalities were in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas.
The Union health ministry has strongly objected to the mathematical models used by WHO for projecting excess mortality estimates linked to the pandemic given the availability of authentic data, saying the validity and robustness of the models used and methodology of data collection were questionable.
India had also informed WHO that given the availability of authentic data published through the Civil Registration System by the Registrar General of India, mathematical models should not be used for projecting excess mortality numbers for India. PTI VA RHL
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Source: The Print
