Covid-19 4th Wave in India Live Updates: India recorded 3,545 fresh Covid-19 infections in the last 24 hours, as per the official data shared by the Ministry of Health on Friday morning. The country also recorded 27 Covid-related fatalities, bringing the total number of deaths to 5,24,002. According to the Health Ministry, the daily positivity rate stood at 1.07 per cent, while the weekly positivity rate was 0.70 per cent. The active caseload stands at 19,688. As per the official data, over 3,500 people have recovered from the Covid-19, taking the total number of recoveries to 4,25,51,248.

India on Thursday raised strong objections regarding the mathematical models used by the World Health Organization (WHO) to project excessively high death estimates linked to the coronavirus pandemic and said that the validity and robustness of the models used and methodology of data collection are questionable. The WHO had on Thursday released a report that said 14.9 million people were killed either by Covid-19 directly or due to the pandemic’s impact on health systems and society, with the global health agency estimating that India had 4.7 million fatalities.

The number of COVID-19 infections in China's financial hub of Shanghai has been on a “continuous downward trend” since April 22, the city's vice major Wu Qing said on Friday. “Currently, our city's epidemic prevention and control situation is steadily improving, and the epidemic has come under effective control,” he told a news conference. Shanghai reported 4,024 new local asymptomatic coronavirus cases on May 5, down from 4,390 a day earlier. Confirmed symptomatic cases stood at 245, also down from 261 a day earlier. Deaths fell to 12, from 13 a day earlier.

I have objections and I'll give 3 reasons for that. One – India has a very robust system of birth & death registration which has been going on for decades, we know it works very well & that data is available. That data should be used to see number of excess deaths that happened during this time & excess deaths that could be attributable to COVID. WHO didn't use that data. Secondly – data that WHO used is more on hearsay evidence -what's there in media or unconfirmed sources. That data is questionable. Modeling on that data isn't correct&scientifically right thing to do, especially, when you have data that is more robust. Third-India has been very liberal in offering compensation for people who died of COVID,that's there in very open manner.

So, even if there were excessive deaths that were COVID related, they would have been recorded because people would have come forward, their relatives would have come forward for compensation. This has not been the case as far as the numbers that WHO is predicting. So, prediction seems to be way beyond what actual numbers are and is based on data that is not substantiated. That is why I think that this is something which we, as a country, should object to & we need to present our data which is scientific & more on evidence basis: Randeep Guleria, AIIMS Director on WHO's claim on COVID deaths in India