Forecaster who foresaw India's COVID peak sees new wave coming

The country may see a worsening of its outbreak as soon as this month, with the next wave peaking in the best-case scenario with less than 100,000 infections a day, or nearly 150,000 in the worst scenario, according to estimates by researchers led by Mathukumalli Vidyasagar and Manindra Agrawal at Indian Institute of Technology in Hyderabad and Kanpur respectively.

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States with high Covid rates, 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…

Experts are concerned about complacency setting in as people resume social and business activity in the face of waning infections. India’s first outbreak last year ebbed with limited damage, leading to a quick resumption of local travel and large-scale festivals that drove the emergence of a devastating second wave in March. With hospitals and crematoriums overwhelmed, researchers estimate that as many as 5 million people may have been killed in that outbreak. The government estimates of total Covid-related fatalities so far is 424,773.

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