Third Covid-19 wave could see double the infections of second, projects Maharashtra

Maharashtra, which reported over four million Covid-19 cases in the second wave, could see double the cases in a possible third wave of infections, stated a presentation made by the state health department to chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on Wednesday

Maharashtra, which reported over four million Covid-19 cases in the second wave, could see double the cases in a possible third wave of infections, stated a presentation made by the state health department to chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on Wednesday. The cases could double due to the new Delta plus variant of Covid-19, it said.

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The health department has also projected that the state’s active cases could go up to 800,000, while infants and children could amount to around 10% of the total cases.

However, state Covid-19 task force members said that the mathematical projections in the first two waves of Covid-19 infections have not been accurate. The task force also said that Delta plus variant may not play a major role, adding that vaccinating the susceptible population is the key to take the sting out of the third wave.

Thackeray, on Wednesday, held a meeting with senior bureaucrats, health department officials, and members of the state Covid task force over the preparation for the third wave, which could hit between August or September. Thackeray directed officials to prepare for the possible third wave by ramping up hospital infrastructure, beds, medical equipment, and liquid medical oxygen.

A statement from the chief minister’s office said, “Compared to the first wave, the number of cases doubled in a smaller period. With the threat of the Delta plus variant, the number of cases could double in the third wave again. In the first wave, the state had 1.9 million, while the second wave saw over 4 million cases. In a presentation made by the health department, the number of active cases could go up to 800,000 and of the total cases [in the third wave], around 10% cases could be among children.”

The Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 has further mutated to form the Delta plus or ‘AY.1’ variant. The B.1.617.2 strain or the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 was identified as one of the main drivers of the second wave of Covid-19 infections that devastated parts of India, including Maharashtra, earlier this year.

The task force also said that a large chunk of the population needs to be inoculated to reduce the impact of the third wave. Task force member Dr Shashank Joshi said, “The faster we are able to shrink the susceptible through vaccination, lesser will be the impact of the third wave… We cannot be complacent; we need to go ahead with aggressive testing and saturate at least 70% of the population with vaccination. If the Government of India can provide 1 crore vaccines a day in the next three months, we should be able to target [inoculating] 10 lakh people per day. We will be able to vaccinate a large population of 12 crore in the state.” The state Covid task force members in the meeting suggested that serosurvey should be carried out in all the districts to find out the susceptible population versus exposed population.

Dr Joshi said that talk of delta plus variant hitting hard is “premature”. He said that the virulence part of the delta strain has not been well documented so far. “Delta plus variant is epiphenomenon as every variant has some sub-types. So, that does not worry us much,” he said. He also said that the projections should not worry the people as most mathematical models have failed to predict Covid-19 wave. “All projections are dependent on models, up till now, none of the models have been able to make reasonable predictions… Virus does not follow any mathematics. One should not get scared with such models,” he said.

Globally, third wave of covid-19 infections have hit after a gap of eight to 12 weeks between the second and third wave. State health department is anticipating that the third wave could hit by August or September. The task force members believe that next wave of infections could hit the unexposed population and in areas where vaccination in poor, as opposed to being a wave hitting the minor population of the state.

“We believe that it may not be a paediatric wave, but it may be a wave [impacting] the less exposed population, which could be in the lower socio-economic strata, like an urban slum, where the vaccination is poor. Wherever there is vaccine hesitancy or poor vaccination, there is a likelihood of the wave to occur... In this [third] wave, we anticipate that the number of hospitalisations, critical cases and deaths will reduce dramatically as a large population will be vaccinated,” Dr Joshi said after the meeting.