A modelling study conducted by the researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur suggests that fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic in India may start around June 22 and peak from mid-to-late August. Though the study is yet-to-peer-reviewed and has been published on the preprint repository MedRxiv that used a statistical model to make the prediction, finding that the possible new wave will last for four months.
The study led by Sabara Parshad Rajeshbhai, Subhra Sankar Dhar, and Shalabh of IIT Kanpur’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics shows that the severity of the fourth wave will depend on the emergence of a possible new variant of COVID-19, and vaccination status across the country.
The authors of the study said, “The data indicates that the fourth wave of COVID-19 in India will arrive after 936 days from the initial data availability date, which is January 30, 2020.” “Therefore, the fourth wave starts from June 22, 2022, reaching its peak on August 23, 2022, and ends on October 24, 2022,” they wrote in the research paper. However, it has been noted by the researchers that there is always a reasonable chance that a possible new variant of coronavirus may impact intensely on the whole analysis. They said, the impact will depend on the various factors like the variant’s infectibility, fatality, etc.
“Apart from this fact, the effect of vaccinations — first, second or booster dosage may also play a significant role on the possibility of infection, degree of infection and various issues related to the fourth wave,” the authors said.
However, the World Health Organization recently cautioned about the Omicron variant of corona may not be the last Covid variant and the next strain could be more contagious
Officials at the World Health Organization recently warned that Omicron may not be the last Covid variant and the next strain could be more transmissible. WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead Maria Van Kerkhove said, “The next variant of concern will be more fit, and what we mean by that is it will be more transmissible because it will have to overtake what is currently circulating.”
India’s Active Caseload is presently at 92,472. Active cases constitute 0.22% of the country’s total Positive Cases. 16,864 patients have recovered in the last 24 hours and the cumulative tally of recovered patients (since the beginning of the pandemic) is now at 4,23,24,550. Consequently, India’s recovery rate stands at 98.59%. That research studied the trend of the Omicron-led surge in COVID-19 cases in other countries and predicted that India too will witness a similar trajectory. In the current study, the researchers applied the statistical methodology to COVID-19 data from India to forecast the occurrence of the fourth wave in the country.
“This methodology can also be used to forecast the fourth and other waves in other countries also,” they said. The researchers noted that many countries have already witnessed the third wave of COVID-19, and a few countries like South Africa and Zimbabwe have started to face the fourth and higher waves of the pandemic.
“The third wave of COVID-19 was predicted for India using the data of Zimbabwe, and when the third wave in India is finishing, it is now clear that the forecast was correct,” the authors added.