- Wednesday, May 08, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIA may witness the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic from August and it would reach the peak in September, a report by the State Bank of India (SBI) has predicted. The report, titled ‘Covid-19: the race to finishing line’, has been prepared by SBI Research and its projections are based on “historical trends”.
“Going by the current data, India can experience daily Covid-19 cases around 10,000 somewhere around the second week of July. However, the cases can start rising by the second fortnight of August,” the report said, adding that India saw the peak of the devastating second wave on May 7.
The study said according to the global data, peak cases on an average reached during the third wave will be almost twice or 1.7 times of those from the second wave of the pandemic which has affected 30.5 million people in India so far.
The SBI projections came even as the second wave of the pandemic recedes and most experts believe that a third wave is a certainty. However, projections differ over when the potential wave would arrive.
In June, an SBI report said a possible third wave could be “as severe as the second” though it also added that the number of fatalities would be less than less compared to the second wave. It, however, warned that the children could be the next vulnerable group and advised speeding up their vaccination.
India’s second wave went up in April and May and the country saw a record number of daily infections and deaths during this period. A severe crisis of oxygen made things worse. However, cases have come down over the past few weeks and several states have now started lifting the restrictions that were put into force to curb the spread.
In the last 24 hours, India saw less than 40,000 new cases and 723 deaths, the Union ministry of health and family welfare said on Monday (5).
