With India reporting less than four lakh cases for a week now, a new tracker developed by researchers at Cambridge Judge Business School and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research has concluded that the number of new coronavirus infections has peaked and is fast heading for a decline.
“But there is substantial variation among states and union territories in their trajectories, with cases continuing to increase over the next two weeks in areas such as Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Tripura,” the researchers wrote.
The projections are based on reported numbers and are in line with those from some other experts, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s advisers.
Meanwhile, eminent virologist Shahid Jameel said has said that India’s second Covid-19 wave seems to have flattened but the climb down will be a more prolonged and a long-drawn-out process than the first and will possibly run till July.
Though the new variants of the virus may partly be responsible for the explosion in the number of cases, there is no indication the mutant versions are more lethal, added the director of the Trivedi School of Biosciences, Ashoka University, amid mounting worries about what is fuelling the second wave in India.
The curve may have flattened but the other side of the peak is not going to be an easy climb down.
“A recent risk assessment of the situation in India conducted by WHO found that resurgence and acceleration of COVID-19 transmission in India had several potential contributing factors, including increase in the proportion of cases of SARS-CoV-2 variants with potentially increased transmissibility; several religious and political mass gathering events which increased social mixing; and, underuse of and reduced adherence to public health and social measures,” the research study said.
India on Wednesday posted a record rise in deaths from COVID-19 over the last 24 hours, pushing its total fatalities past the 250,000 mark. Deaths from COVID-19 swelled by 4,205, while daily coronavirus cases rose by 348,421, with India’s overall caseload now surging past 23 million, according to health ministry data.
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