India has sharply criticised a forthcoming World Health Organization study which reportedly claims coronavirus killed four million people nationally, the latest analysis suggesting a significant undercount of the pandemic's death toll.
The New York Times reported last week that New Delhi had stalled the study's release after disputing that India's true fatality count was eight times higher than official figures.
The conclusion matches similar figures by the Lancet last month and a February study in the journal Science that calculated a Covid death toll of at least 3.2 million.
But India's health ministry said in a weekend statement that the WHO's mathematical modelling of the pandemic was "questionable" and "statistically unproven".
Several concerns were raised to the global health body over the report, including what the ministry said was a "peculiar" assumption of a relationship between lower temperatures and monthly deaths.
India had shared its misgivings through several formal communications and meetings since last November, according to the ministry.
"A satisfactory response is yet to be received from WHO," it added.
The WHO was not immediately available for comment.
Indian officials have previously disputed the methodology behind the Lancet and Science studies that also found vastly higher death tolls.
Its official figures show 520,000 Covid deaths nationally, which still accounts for the world's largest single-country toll after the United States and Brazil.
India was battered by a devastating Covid outbreak last year that saw thousands of people dying each day at its peak, overwhelming hospitals and crematoriums.
Agatha Christie boarding the EET Salon at lunchtime on the train from Bulawayo to the Cape. In 1922 Agatha Christie set sail on a 10-month voyage around the world. Her husband Archie had been invited to join a trade mission to promote the British Empire Exhibition and Agatha was determined to go with him The Christie Archive Trust
Agatha Christie under a tree on Honolulu beach after surfing, 1922. Agatha and her husband Archie were permitted to take a short holiday away from the 1922 trade mission and chose Honolulu where they learnt how to surf on longboards. Here Agatha purchased a surf suit in the local style, better suited to the demands of surfing than her swim attire for bathing in Torquay. The Christie Archive Trust
Agatha Christie relaxing during a sightseeing tour, Tajoura, Libya, 1955. Agatha and her second husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan had invited Agatha's daughter Rosalind and grandson Mathew to join them on a tour of the ancient sites of Leptis Magna and Sabratah during December 1955. The Christie Archive Trust
Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express, 201720th Century Studios
Still from Murder on the Orient Express, 201720th Century Studios
Still from And Then There Were None, 2015, BBC Agatha Christie Limited
Still from And Then There Were None, 2015, BBCAgatha Christie Limited
Still from And Then There Were None, 2015, BBCAgatha Christie Limited
Agatha Christie’s Remington typewriter from 1937 The Christie Archive Trust
Agatha Christie’s Remington typewriter from 1937The Christie Archive Trust
Agatha Christie’s study notes for her pharmaceutical exam taken in 1917The Christie Archive Trust
Letter from Agatha Christie to her second husband Max Mallowan, in December 1930. Agatha writes to Max describing her return home from their honeymoon, on the Orient Express. Documenting how the train had been halted by floods and her fellow travellers' reactions, this event would inspire her to write Murder on the Orient Express a few years later.The Christie Archive Trust
Cover of typescript ofHouse of Beauty, Agatha Christie’s first short story written when she was just a teenager.The Christie Archive Trust
Box for Tabloid Veronal tablets,1910-1940 Science Museum Group
Chemical storage bottle and glass stopper, labelled ‘POISON phosphorus P’,1907-1912Science Museum Group
Empty poison bottle for aconite, iodine and chloretone solution,1925-1960Science Museum Group
Newby Teas
