New Delhi: The third wave of Covid-19 in India may peak between October and November, but its intensity will be much less than the second phase. A scientist involved in the mathematical modeling of the epidemic said this on Monday.
IIT-Kanpur scientist Manindra Agarwal said that the situation is unlikely to change if no new form comes. He is part of a three-member expert team that has been given the task of estimating the rise in infections.
If the third wave comes, the country will see one lakh cases per day, as against four lakh cases per day during the peak of the second wave in May. In the second wave, thousands of people died and several lakhs were infected.
Aggarwal tweeted, “If a new mutation does not occur then status quo will prevail and by September if 50 percent more infectious mutations are detected then the new variant will emerge. You can see that the third wave will come from the new pattern itself and in that case the new cases will increase to one lakh per day.”
Last month, the model predicted that the third wave would peak between October and November and that daily cases would be between 1.5 lakh and two lakh per day if the more contagious mutation of SARS-Cov-2 was found.
However, no more infectious mutation than delta emerged. Last week’s estimate was similar, but in the new estimate, the number of daily cases has been reduced to 1.5 lakh. Aggarwal said the latest figures include vaccination and serosurveys conducted in July and August.
