Third wave of COVID19 to hit India this month, peak in October: Report
The researchers who accurately predicted the second wave of COVID19 in India have been reported as stating that the third wave is around the corner in the country. The slow pace of vaccination can worsen the crisis. More details here.
ICMR has stated that the severity of the third wave is expected to be far less than the second wave if no new variant of SARS-CoV-2 emerges.
According to a mathematical model that accurately predicted the ‘second wave’ of COVID19 in India, the ‘third wave’ is likely to hit the country this month, in August, and is expected to peak in the month of October.
In a report on a ‘new wave’ of COVID19 in India, Bloomberg quoted these estimates by researchers led by Mathukumalli Vidyasagar and Manindra Agrawal from the Indian Institute of Technology in Hyderabad and Kanpur respectively.
“The next wave is likely to be far smaller than the second wave that peaked at a record 400,000-plus daily cases on May 7 and declined sharply thereafter. But the forecast still underscores the need for India to accelerate its vaccination campaign, deploy surveillance methods to catch emerging hotspots and stay vigilant through genome sequencing given the potential for new variants to emerge,” it stated.
“India has so far administered 470.3 million vaccine doses, but only 7.6 per cent of the population is fully vaccinated, according to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker. The relatively slow uptake has added to concerns that the country may not be fully geared for the next wave,” it added.
The report quoted Paul Kattuman, professor in the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge, as saying that the growth of infection in large states can accelerate the present figures for the daily number of cases in the country.
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“If infection begins to increase in a few large states, the present balance will tip, and cases are likely to begin growing again in the country as a whole,” Kattuman was quoted.
“We might expect to see a slow-burn in the country for a duration — this can be expected to last till vaccination coverage is sufficiently high to induce herd immunity,” he added.
‘Third wave not as deadly as second wave’
Meanwhile, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) stated on July 22 that that mathematical modelling cannot exactly predict the ‘third wave’ but its severity is expected to be far less than the second wave if no new variant of SARS-CoV-2 emerges.