LONDON: The World Health Organisation has raised questions about the death toll from the pandemic, with a new report stating that numbers so far reveal that the actual number of deaths from the pandemic were nearly three times more than what official data showed.

The report pinpointed India, saying that almost half of the deaths that had not been counted until now occurred in the country, and suggests that 4.7 million people died there, mainly during a huge surge in May and June 2021.

The Indian government, however, puts its death toll for the January 2020-December 2021 period far lower: about 480,000.

WHO said it had not yet fully examined new data provided this week by India, which has pushed back against the WHO estimates and issued its own mortality figures for all causes of death in 2020 on Tuesday. WHO said it may add a disclaimer to the report highlighting the ongoing conversation with India.

In a statement issued after the numbers were published, the Indian government said WHO had released the report “without adequately addressing India’s concerns” over what it called “questionable” methods.

The WHO panel, made up of international experts who have been working on the data for months, used a combination of national and local information, as well as statistical models, to estimate totals where the data is incomplete — a methodology that India has criticised.

However, other independent assessments have also put the death toll in India far higher than the official government tally, including a report published in Science which suggested 3 million people may have died of Covid in the country.

There were 14.9 million excess deaths associated with Covid-19 by the end of 2021. The official count of deaths directly attributable to Covid-19 and reported to WHO in that period, from January 2020 to the end of December 2021, is slightly more than 5.4 million.