Pune: The third wave of COVID-19 is likely to get over in India by the middle of March, Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at IIT Kanpur Manindra Agrawal told the Indian Express.
He predicted that the third wave would peak in Mumbai and Delhi in mid-January with daily cases at around 50,000-60,000 and 30,000 cases (on a seven-day average).
“The Delhi and Mumbai curves are likely to come down as rapidly as they have gone up. The all-India curve has just started to rise. It should take another month’s time to peak and come down. By the middle of March, the third wave of the pandemic is likely to be more or less over in India,” he said during a session moderated by Amitabh Sinha, Resident Editor (Pune).
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Agrawal further said that the loss of immunity, especially loss of natural immunity, seems a lot more in India as compared to South Africa. “We thought India would have a similar trajectory as South Africa. It didn’t happen. The reason is something that virologists and biologists should be able to explain,” he said.
Agrawal, who leads the government-backed Sutra model which mathematically predicts the spread of the virus, said that India might see four to eight lakh cases (seven-day average) by the end of this month. “The third wave may go beyond our upper limit of eight lakh cases in a day and touch around 10 lakh,” he said.
He, however, saw no direct link between the rise in cases and election rallies. “The election rally was only one of the many things that had caused the wave to spread in the past,” he added.
