COVID-19 third wave peaks in Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai: IIT-Kanpur professor

IIT Kanpur professor Dr Manindra Agrawal said that the Omicron-triggered coronavirus third wave has reached its peak in Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai as predicted by IIT’s Sutra model. He also said that COVID-19 will peak in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Haryana this week.
 
“In Maharashtra, it is predicted to peak on 19th. May peak sooner since the trajectory is almost flat at present. Gujarat is predicted to peak on the 19th. Haryana is predicted to peak on 20th,” Dr Agrawal explained.
 
He further mentioned that the COVID-19 wave is predicted to peak on 23rd in Karnataka and it is predicted to peak on 25th January in Tamil Nadu. The IIT-Kanpur also predicted that COVID-19 is predicted to peak on the 30th in Andhra Pradesh.
 
Dr Agrawal, however, added that the number of hospitalisations continues to be very low as less than 1 percent cases reported in Uttar Pradesh need hospitalisation.
 
“Hospitalisations continue to be very low. UP, I understand, has less than 1 percent reported cases needing hospitalisation. We now need to wait for new phases everywhere to stabilise. We can capture the trajectories much better, and also understand the reasons for deviations,” he said.

Agrawal tweeted, “There appear two plausible reasons for this: 1) there are two groups in population, one with less immunity against Omicron and other with more. The mutant first spread in the first group causing sharp rise. Now the first group is exhausted and so the spread is slower.”
 
He further noted, “2) There was a lot of concern when Omicron started spreading, but in the last week or so, people almost everywhere have concluded that it causes only mild infection and have decided to handle it with standard remedies instead of getting tested.”

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