Covid-19 second wave may peak in India by mid-April, say scientists
Scientists have predicted that in the second wave of Covid-19, the first state to be affected could be Punjab in a few days, followed by Maharashtra.
Using a mathematical model, scientists have predicted that the ongoing second wave of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) across India could peak by mid-April, after which it may see a decline by May end.
A mathematical approach, named SUTRA, predicted last year that the initial spike of the coronavirus infection in August would rise by September and decrease in February this year.
Manindra Agrawal, a scientist from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, applied the model to predict the trajectory of the current spike in coronavirus disease and found that the number of daily new infections is likely to peak in mid-April.
"For the last several days, we have found that there is a reasonable chance that the cases in India could peak sometime between 15-20 April. It is a sharp slope, but on the way down, it would likely be equally sharp, coming down very fast and by end of May may see a dramatic reduction," Agrawal told news agency PTI.
He further said that there is some uncertainty in predicting the peak value of daily new infections because of the sharp rise. "Currently, it is coming to 1 lakh infections per day, but this can go up or down. But the timing remains the same between April 15-20," he added.
Scientists have predicted that in the second wave of Covid-19, the first state to be affected could be Punjab in a few days, followed by Maharashtra.
However, Agrawal added that the model's prediction of the new peak is sensitive to the daily new infections data. "Even a little bit of change each day causes the peak numbers to change by several thousand numbers. But the location of the peak has remained on mid-April," he said.
Independent calculations made by scientists, including Gautam Menon from Ashoka University in Haryana, have also predicted that the surge of the second wave of Covid-19 infections could be between mid-April and mid-May.
"Any excessively precise prediction, of a peak within just a 5-day window, would ignore the many uncertainties associated with the inputs to any such calculation," Menon told PTI.
Agrawal stated that the SUTRA model uses three main parameters to predict the course of the coronavirus pandemic. "The first is called Beta, or contact rate, which measures how many people an infected person infects per day. It is related to the R-naught value, which is the number of people an infected person spreads the virus to over the course of their infection," he added.
He said the other two parameters are 'Reach', which is a measure of exposure level of the population to Covid-19 pandemic, and 'Epsilon' which is the ratio of detected and undetected coronavirus cases.
Agrawal said, "The reason we had to introduce 'Reach' is that unlike earlier pandemics which start at a location and suddenly spread fast across a place, in Covid-19, the spread of the pandemic has been slower due to the many protective measures in place."
He further said that 'Epsilon' helps factor in the number of asymptomatic infections across the nation. "Since the detected cases are quarantined, we assume they no longer contribute to new infections. So a growing number of daily new cases, reflect larger undetected infections. By measuring the number of new cases each day, we try to estimate the undetected and asymptomatic infections," he added.
Agrawal said the SUTRA model relies on inputs from daily reported new infections, based on which the value of the three main parameters are deduced.
"We learn everything from the daily-infections data. The beta value across India has gone up by 50 per cent in March, which indicates that a combination of factors -- people becoming more relaxed, and more infectious variants going around. But precisely what reason this could be is something biologists have to say," he added.
Agrawal said the model did not previously predict a second Covid-19 wave in India as it could have been due to a change in the parameters sometime between February and March this year. "So clearly during this time, some parameters had changed. So we had to wait for some time to collect new data and see how the parameters had changed, which we now know," he added.
On Saturday, India recorded 89,129 new Covid-19 cases and 714 related deaths in the last 24 hours, according to the health ministry’s dashboard. With the new infections and fatalities, the country’s tally mounted to 12,392,260 and its death toll to 164,110, respectively.
(With inputs from agencies)