India May Witness 3rd Wave of COVID-19 from August: Research Report

NEW DELHI: As the number of COVID cases is rising in India, a research report has contended that India may witness the third COVID wave from August 2021. The report prepared by SBI Research stated that the third wave of COVID will be arriving in the month of September 2021.

The research report said that India witnessed its second wave peak on May 7. It said that going by the current data, India cancelled experience cases around 10,000 somewhere around the second week of July. The cases may start rising by the second fortnight of August.

As per the report, worldwide information shows that on normal third wave top cases are around 1.7 times the peak cases at the time of the second wave. India has begun giving in excess of 40 lakh vaccination doses each day as shown by 7 DMA. In general, India has completely vaccinated 4.6% of its population, aside from 20.8% having gotten one dose. This is still lower than other countries including the US, the UK, Israel, Spain, and France among others.

On the other hand, scientist and professor at IIT Kanpur, Manindra Agrawal said that if a new virulent variant of SARS-CoV-2 emerges, the infection will spread faster during the third wave. He is part of the master board framed by the Department of Science and Technology last year to gauge the surge of COVID cases utilizing mathematical models. Other than Agrawal, who is a professor at IIT-Kanpur, the panel additionally has M Vidyasagar, another researcher with IIT-Hyderabad, and Lt. Gen Madhuri Kanitkar, Deputy Chief (Medical) of Integrated Defense Staff, as individuals.

Taking to Twitter, Agrawal explained that they have created three scenarios. One is optimistic, where they assume that life goes back to normal by August and there is no new mutant. Another is intermediate wherein they assume that vaccination is 20 per cent less effective in addition to optimistic scenario assumptions. "The final one is pessimistic with assumptions different from the intermediate one: a new 25 per cent more infectious mutant spreads in August (it is not Delta plus, which is not more infectious than Delta variant)," he added.

He, likewise, shared a chart that showed that the second wave is probably going to level by mid-August and a potential third wave could arrive at its top among October and November.

Meanwhile, India has recorded 39,796 new COVID cases and 723 deaths in the last 24 hours. While cases and fatalities have seen dip, the recovery rate has risen to 97.11%.

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