Guwahati: The third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in India may peak on January 23 with daily cases likely to remain below 4 lakhs, according to a scientist at the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur.
Manindra Agrawal, a professor at IIT Kanpur and one of the Sutra Covid model’s researchers stated that in the last seven days, case counts in Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata have hit a crescendo.
However, since the start of the pandemic, the Sutra model has been used to track and predict Covid case counts across the country.
According to Agrawal, COVID-19 instances will rise this week in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and Haryana while states like Andhra Pradesh, Assam, and Tamil Nadu may surge next week.
In India, daily peak cases are expected to peak on January 23 and remain below the four-thousand mark.
Agrawal said that the metro cities of Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata have already reached their pinnacle.
According to the trajectory with data up to the 11th, the peak was on the 23rd of January, with approximately 7.2 lakh instances per day
Agrawal stated that the actual trend is already deviating dramatically, and the actual peak is unlikely to exceed 4 lakh cases per day.
He further added that COVID-19’s third wave will peak by the end of January.
“Trajectories are shifting dramatically across the country. I had speculated that it was due to ICMR guidelines requiring a different testing technique. However, these guidelines have yet to be implemented in many places, and the trajectory has shifted!” he said.
According to a new government recommendation, Individuals travelling between states and contacts of known Covid cases do not need to be tested unless they are deemed high risk due to age or comorbidities.
There are two potential explanations, in his opinion, for the shift in the Omicron-led case trend in India.
The populace is divided into two groups, one having less immunity to Omicron and the other with more. The mutation propagated quickly in the first group generating a significant increase in the population. He said that because the first group is now weary, the propagation is slower.
When the Omicron version first emerged in November of last year there was a lot of fear, Agarwal added.
However, he claims that in the last week or two practically everyone has come to the conclusion that the variety only causes minor infection and has elected to treat it with regular treatments rather than getting tested.
A study undertaken by a different research team at the institute previously suggested that the third wave of the epidemic in India could peak by February 3.
That study which was published on the public portal MedRxiv on December 23, looked at the trend of Omicron-driven increases in COVID-19 cases in other nations and anticipated that India would follow suit.
According to official estimates, India recorded a single-day increase of 2,82,970 new COVID-19 infections and 441 deaths on Wednesday, bringing the total number of cases to 3,79,01,241 and the death toll to 4,87,202.