India likely to witness third COVID wave this month, may peak in October: Report
States with high caseload, such as Kerala and Maharashtra, could “skew the picture”, Vidyasagar told Bloomberg in an email.
FollowIndia may witness a rise in Covid-19 cases as soon as August with the third wave peaking with less than 100,000 infections a day in the best-case scenario or nearly 150,000 in the worst scenario, researchers have said.
Bloomberg reported citing researchers led by Mathukumalli Vidyasagar and Manindra Agrawal at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Hyderabad and Kanpur respectively that the surge in Covid-19 cases will push the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic, which may peak in October.
States with high caseload, such as Kerala and Maharashtra, could “skew the picture”, Vidyasagar told Bloomberg in an email.
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.
Covid in India registered a 7.5% rise in cases after a steady decline for 11 weeks. India recorded just over 2.86 lakh new cases in the current week from July 26 to August 1, a 7.5% rise from the previous week’s tally of 2.66 lakh. Weekly cases in the country have registered a rise for the first time since May 3-9, when the second wave peaked.
In May, Vidyasagar, a professor at IIT Hyderabad said India’s coronavirus outbreak could peak in the coming days based on the mathematical model. “Our predictions are that the peak will come within a few days. As per current projections, we should hit 20,000 cases per day by the end of June. We will revise this as needed," Vidyasagar told Bloomberg by email.
Last month, Agrawal, who is also a scientist of a government panel tasked with modelling of Covid-19 cases, had said that the possible third wave of coronavirus may see half the daily cases recorded during the second surge and it can hit its peak between October-November if Covid-appropriate behaviour is not followed.
Additionally, the medical experts also warned that the Delta variant of Covid-19 can also be passed on by vaccinated people, which can in turn fuel the surge.
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