A mathematical module of the IIT scientists on Friday suggested that the ongoing second wave of Covid pandemic in India may peak between May 11-15 with 33-35 lakh total active cases and decline steeply by the end of May. On Friday, India saw a single-day rise of 3,32,730 (3.32 lakh) Covid-19 infections and 2,263 fatalities with 24,28,616 (24.28 lakh) active cases.
Applying the Susceptible, Undetected, Tested (positive), and Removed Approach’ (SUTRA) model, the scientists from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and Hyderabad predicted that the active cases would go up by about 10 lakh by mid-May.
The scientists also said Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and Telangana may see a high of new cases by April 25-30, while Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh might already have reached their peak in new cases.
Manindra Agrawal, a professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT-Kanpur, said there is a reasonable chance that the active cases in India could peak sometime between May 11-15 with 33-35 lakh cases. 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.
Earlier this month, the mathematical modelling approach predicted that active infections in the country would peak by April 15 but this didn’t come true. Aggrawal explained that the parameters in model for the current phase are continuously drifting. So it is hard to get their value right. He suggested even a little bit of change each day causes the peak numbers to change by several thousand.
The IIT Kanpur professor said that the SUTRA model’s prediction about new peak is sensitive to the daily new infections data. Agrawal noted that the model uses three main parameters to predict the course of the pandemic. The other two parameters are ‘reach’, which is a measure of the exposure level of the population to the pandemic, and ‘epsilon’ which is the ratio of detected and undetected cases. There are other mathematical modules as well.
Independent calculations by Gautam Menon and his team at Ashoka University in Haryana have predicted that the peak of the ongoing wave of infections could be between mid-April and mid-May.