New Delhi: ‘There is a disturbing trend in the Covid-19 pattern across India’, asserted eminent physicist Dr Vipin Srivastava, who forecast the onset of the third wave of the pandemic on July 4. Srivastava, who has developed a method to observe the pattern of the number of cases and deaths for the past 463 days, said that the Daily Death Load (DDL) has worsened in recent weeks, which indicates that the third wave is taking a turn for the worse.
The DDL has gone towards more positive levels, which is undesirable. In the 15 days period – July 24 to August 7 – it was positive on 10 occasions and seven times in the latter 10 days, the Times of India reported. Despite seropositivity in around two-thirds of the population, Dr Vipin has ruled out herd immunity in the country so far.
“The cause for concern is the appearance of ‘wild’ fluctuations in DDL since July 4. This is found to occur whenever there is a crossover in the scenario, i.e. when the number of daily deaths changes from an increasing trend to a decreasing one, or vice versa. However, an intriguing aspect of the ongoing big fluctuations in the DDL is that they are much wilder than the earlier ones and that they are not showing signs of settling down even after a month,” Times of India quoted Srivastava as saying.
The physicist attributed the fluctuations in DDL partially to the uncertainty associated with the official data. While the number of fatalities was modified a few times during the first wave of Covid-19, the uncertainties associated with this number saw a rise following the second wave. This is evident in the graph of daily Covid-19 deaths during the second wave, which reflects the huge fluctuations.
Speaking to the daily, Srivastava said, “When the number of new Covid-19 cases per 24 hours was in the lakhs, the number of recovered cases was also in the lakhs. When the former was dipped to thousands, the latter dropped to thousands as well. The Patient Load (number of new patients introduced for every healed patient) ratio was usually around 1. However, when the number of deaths in 24 hours was increasing rapidly during the second wave of the pandemic, the maximum value that this ratio attained was around 2.2.”