New Delhi: ICMR has refuted a report that researchers, under government orders, expunged from an IJMR scientific paper the prevalence rates of the coronavirus in containment zones or hotspots in 10 cities, estimated through a national survey.
The report in The Telegraph, titled ‘How the Covid numbers were hushed up’, claimed that Indian Council of Medical Research head Balram Bhargava asked the researchers to remove the infection prevalence data from the 10 citiesā hotspots they had included in their paper, giving no specific reasons for the same.
Bhargava has rebutted the reports and said the findings were not included in the first national serosurvey study paper published recently as the sample size was very small and the zones are dynamic and change from day to day and week to week.
The ICMR had on Sunday said that the findings of the previous serosurvey from the dynamic containment zones in ten cities to assess the extent of COVID-19 transmission in those areas have been communicated to the states for further action.