The Modi government said the COVID-19 second wave in India is on the downswing in the light of the gradual decline in the daily cases over the last several days.

VK Paul, Member-Health, Niti Aayog said during a briefing as quoted by The Indian Express, " It is reassuring that we are on the downswing of the second wave, and it will be sustained if restrictions open up systematically as the time comes."

The government has so far provided more than 220 million vaccine doses to the states and union territories, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Thursday, IBNS reported. 

The vaccines have been provided through the free of cost category and the direct state procurement category, it said.

Over 211,000 new COVID-19 cases and 3,847 deaths apparently due to the infection were reported in the last 24 hours in India.

The COVID-19 death toll has now risen to 315,235, the third highest in the world after the United States and Brazil. 

The active cases in the country have dipped further to 2.4 million while the national recovery percentage has further improved to 89.66%.

Meanwhle, the government trashed a New York Times report as "baseless" that said India's Covid deaths were severely undercounted and underreported.

"The NYT report is not backed by any evidence and is based on distorted estimates," said  Paul, the head of India's Covid task force.

In an article published on Tuesday, the New York Times reported that India's death count was more likely three times the official 300,000, probably close to a million .

The report was based on data from three nationwide sero surveys or antibody tests.

The report cited various scenarios and estimated 4.2 million deaths in the worst case while claiming that the official figures in India "grossly understate the true scale of the pandemic in the country".

Paul said it was possible that the number of infections could be many times higher than positive Covid tests but it could not be the same for deaths.

"There may be some late reporting of deaths but there's no intent of any state or the Centre. If I apply the same three times' yardstick to New York, then there would be 50,000 deaths. But they say it's 16,000. So this is distorted," he told the media.

"Our number (fatality) is 0.05 per cent of those infected. They've said 0.3 per cent. Why? On what basis have you decided that it's 0.3 per cent of that large infection universe? There is no basis at all. Five people get together, make phone calls to each other and then throw this number. That's how this report has been done," alleged Paul.

"It is reassuring that we are on the downswing of the second wave, and it will be sustained if restrictions open up systematically as the time comes," said he.