India's estimated cumulative excess deaths due to Covid-19 between January 2020 and December 2021 were the highest in the world at 4.07 million, around eight times higher than reported, according to a new analysis in the Lancet. Responding to the findings, the Union Health ministry on Friday termed the analysis “speculative and misinformed” and said the authors had themselves admitted to several methodology flaws and inconsistencies. The study takes into account different methodologies for different countries, the ministry said in a statement. For India, for example, data sources used by the study appear to have been taken from newspaper reports and non-peer reviewed studies, it said.

“This model uses data of all cause excess mortality (created by another non-peer reviewed model) as an input and this raises serious concerns about the accuracy of the results of this statistical exercise,” the ministry said.The Lancet reported on Thursday that excess mortality rates due to Covid among Indian states are not the highest in the world, because of India's large population, but the country accounted for around 22·3 per cent of global excess deaths as of December 31, 2021. The paper estimates excess mortality from the Covid-19 pandemic in 191 countries and territories from January 1, 2020, to December 31, 2021.Although reported Covid-19 deaths in that period totalled 5·94 million worldwide, the Lancet paper estimates that 18·2 million people died worldwide because of the Covid-19 pandemic, as measured by excess mortality, over that period. This is around three times higher than previously estimated.