64-year-old Shahid Jameel declined to give reasons for walking out from the scientific body called INSACOG, set up to track various strains in 10 laboratories across India.
But the specialist quit days after he criticized the government in an article he wrote for the New York Times.
“Scientists were facing stubborn resistance to evidence-based policy-making,” the virologist said, referring to an appeal made to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by over 800 Indian scientists on 30 April seeking access to data needed to predict the virus.
“Decision-making based on data is yet another casualty,” he said.
The coronavirus surge continues to kill thousands of people in India each day according to government statistics.
The government has so far not commented on Jameel’s allegations but professor Gautam Menon, a colleague of the virologist at the Ashoka University, said the “problem was much bigger.”
“It is not whether the government pays attention or not to what it has been told in terms of data. Our attitude to data and its collection itself must change,” he told a TV debate on Monday night.
He said scant respect for data was the issue.
The controversy surfaced even as the highly-contagious B.1.617 strain seeped into rural areas, where 70 percent of Indians live.
Pictures of hand-dug graves, bodies bobbing in rivers and scavengers tearing at human flesh have revealed the true horror in the countryside.
Dipping cases, rising dispute
Questions were also asked as India reported a decline in new infections for the fifth straight day on Monday, praising it as an “achievement” of the government.
But experts argued daily infections dropping below 300,000 for the first time since 21 April was because of low testing in the villages, which have less than nine doctors for every 10,000 people and health data is scarce.
S. Vincent Rajkumar, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in the US, said the decline was an “illusion.”
"Cases are truly decreasing in the cities and probably in urban areas in the north but we are not counting cases in the rural areas,” Rajkumar told NDTV and added testing was declining in villages.
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On Monday, the Indian Council of Medical Research said it had so far tested 316 million samples and added 1.5 million people were screened on Sunday itself.
World Health Organization Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan said that was not enough.
"When you see high test positivity rates, clearly we are not testing enough,” Swaminathan said.
“The national positivity rate, around 20 percent, is very high,” she argued.
PM Modi orders action
The government is facing criticism for its response to the deadly virus surge and has stepped up its reaction to the complaints.
Narendra Modi called for door-to-door testing in rural India and sought plans for oxygen supply in the country’s estimated 650,000 villages.
“The prime minister instructed that testing needs to be scaled up further… especially in areas with high test positivity rates,” the government added.
But public health expert Poonam Muttreja said reluctance to testing in the countryside could put India’s vast rural population at some risk.
India’s vaccination drive also hit a wall after Delhi offered shots to all adults from 1 May but without having stock in hand.
The number of jabs dropped by almost half from 4.2 million per day on 2 April to around two million last week.
