COVID-19: Omicron to peak in India by February 15, may spell end of 3rd wave: Experts
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New Delhi: Most of India will see a peak in Omicron cases by mid February, health experts said on Tuesday.
Speaking to IANS, Dr Shashank Joshi, member of COVID-19 Maharashtra State Task Force noted that Omicron has followed the South African pattern in the case of both Mumbai and Delhi.
“It’s a very rapidly progressive and explosive wave, which will come very fast and hopefully go very fast.
“Mumbai has already passed the peak, Maharashtra will peak by the first week of February.
“Most parts of India might peak between the first and 15th of February. Somewhere in March, Omicron will be much less and hopefully we should have a disruption free India April onwards,” said Joshi, who is also an endocrinologist at the Lilavati Hospital, Mumbai.
Recent projections by researchers at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Statistical Institute (IISc-ISI) claim that the country is likely to witness over 1 million COVID-19 cases a day at January-end/beginning of February when the third wave meets its peak.
The Omicron ‘Projections January-March 2022 IISc-ISI Model’ by Professor Siva Athreya, Professor Rajesh Sundaresan and team from the Centre for Networked Intelligence at IISc-ISI in Bengaluru predicts that the third Covid wave may peak in January-end and early-February, with daily cases touching 10 lakh.
The peak of the third wave will vary for different states and the Covid-19 curve for India could start flattening by March-beginning.
Joshi also noted that the reduction in Omicron cases will also result in the end of the third wave in India. However, the presence of Delta, in “small pockets” may cause some trouble, he said.
“If there is no new variant of concern, then probably we are looking for disruption free Covid life,” he noted.
However, Dr Vikas Maurya, HoD and Director, Pulmonology, Fortis Hospital Shalimar Bagh, said that it could be too early to predict the end of Covid.
“Gradually it may result in endemicity of virus with continuous presence of few cases in next few months or with recurrent spurts of infection within marginal cases,” Maurya told IANS.
The Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry on Tuesday said that India has witnessed a substantial decrease in fresh Covid cases, reporting 2,38,018 new infections in the last 24 hours, and a total of 310 deaths.
On Monday, the country had reported 2,58,089 new cases and 385 deaths.
But, the Omicron infection tally has risen to 8,891 across the nation, an increase of 8.31 per cent from Monday.
According to Joshi, the key statistics to look for in Omicron is that 80 per cent of people are asymptomatic, and the need for hospitalisations, oxygen, and ventilators are much less compared to previous waves.
Further, “greater vaccine coverage will definitely result in asymptomatic or milder cases rather than severe cases and in complete eradication of this virus in near future”, Maurya said.
Covid third wave likely to peak this week in Maharashtra, Karnataka; TN may see peak next week. Details here
The national capital, Mumbai and Kolkata have already reached their peak in case numbers in the past seven days, Manindra Agrawal said, a professor at IIT Kanpur and one of the researchers associated with the Sutra Covid model.
The Sutra model has been used to track and predict Covid case numbers in the country since the beginning of the pandemic.
Agrawal said that the Covid-19 cases will peak in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and Haryana this week, while states like Andhra Pradesh, Assam, and Tamil Nadu may peak next week.
“The daily peak cases are projected to peak on January 23 in India and stay below the four lakh mark. Metro cities Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata have already peaked," Agrawal told news agency PTI.
“Trajectory with data up to 11th indicates the peak on 23th Jan with nearly 7.2 lakh cases per day. The actual trajectory is already deviating significantly, and the actual peak is unlikely to cross 4 lakh cases/day," Agrawal wrote on Twitter.
Agrawal had earlier predicted that the third wave of coronavirus will peak by January end.
“Across the country, the trajectories are changing significantly. I speculated earlier that it is due to ICMR guidelines for a changed testing strategy. However, at many places, these guidelines are not yet implemented and still, the trajectory has changed!" he said.
According to a new government advisory, individuals undertaking inter-state domestic travel and contacts of confirmed Covid cases do not need to get tested unless identified as “high risk" based on age or comorbidities,
In his view, there are two plausible reasons for the change in the Omicron-led case trajectory in India.
“There are two groups in the population, one with less immunity against Omicron and the other with more. The mutant first spread in the first group causing a sharp rise. Now the first group is exhausted and so the spread is slower," he explained.
Agrawal noted that there was a lot of concern when the Omicron variant started spreading in November last year.
However, he said, in the last week or so, people almost everywhere have concluded that the variant causes only “mild infection" and have decided to handle it with standard remedies instead of getting tested.
Previously, a study conducted by a different research team at the institute showed that the third wave of the pandemic in India might peak by February 3.
That study, posted on the preprint repository MedRxiv on December 23, 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.
Meanwhile, with 2,82,970 new coronavirus infections being reported in a day, India's total tally Covid-19 cases rose to 3,79,01,241, which includes 8,961 cases of the Omicron variant, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Wednesday.
The active cases have increased to 18,31,000, the highest in 232 days. The active cases stood at 18,95,520 on May 31 last year.
The death toll has climbed to 4,87,202 with 441 fresh fatalities, the data updated at 8 am stated.
There has been an 0.79 per cent increase in Omicron cases since Tuesday, the ministry said.
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