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The Pakistani government has dismissed the World Health Organization’s (WHO) report on COVID-19 deaths in the country, challenging the UN agency’s data collection process and speculating on a software glitch.
The WHO projected 260,000 COVID-19 deaths in Pakistan in a recent research, which is eight times higher than the official figure. Pakistan recorded 30,369 COVID-19 deaths and 1.5 million illnesses, according to official figures.
“We have been personally collecting statistics on Covid deaths; the difference could be a few hundred, but not thousands. This is unfounded “According to Abdul Qadir Patel, Minister of Health, Samaa News.
According to the study, the coronavirus killed 15 million people worldwide in the last two years, more than trebling the official death toll of 6 million. Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Americas accounted for the majority of deaths.
In a note denying the WHO’s figures, Minister Patel stated the government disclosed the calculation process to the WHO.
Patel questioned the data gathering methods, claiming that figures were collected from hospitals, union councils, and graveyards in Pakistan.
According to a report by Samaa News, he suspected “some glitch” in the WHO’s data collection software, which had been “reporting statistics on average.”
The health ministry responded to the WHO report by stating that a reporting mechanism is in place whereby every COVID-19-related death is reported on a district level, which is then collated at a provincial level by the respective healthcare systems, and finally, a cumulative number is shared on a national level and reported via official channels.
Pakistan’s death toll is verified and widely accepted around the world. Multiple checks and balances on reporting systems are in place, and the increased deaths documented in graveyards correspond to the COVID-19 waves that affected Pakistan, according to the report.
In the meantime, Faisal Sultan, a former special assistant to the then-prime minister on health, stated WHO statistics on coronavirus deaths in Pakistan is “not trustworthy.”
He defended the government’s death reports, claiming that examinations of the amount of graveyard burials in key cities revealed that there were no substantial numbers of uncounted pandemic casualties.
The data are “very sensitive,” Sultan said, because they will reflect on how governments throughout the world handled the situation.
“Our coronavirus mortality record was accurate,” he said, “but it’s impossible to have a 100 percent exact death count; it could be 10-30 percent less, but eight times less is incredible.”
