Within the next few days, India’s COVID-19 growth rate might surge, bringing in a strong but short virus wave as the highly infectious omicron variant spreads over the country’s crowded population of around 1.4 billion people.
According to a Bloomberg report “It is likely that India will see a time of the exponential rise in daily cases, with the intensive growth phase being relatively brief.” “In an email, Paul Kattuman, professor at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge, who has developed a COVID-19 India tracker, wrote, “New infections will begin to emerge in a few days, potentially as early as this week.”
Kattuman and his team of researchers, who developed the India Covid tracker, have noticed a significant increase in infection rates across India. Six states were singled out by the tracker as being of “serious concern.” “In a December 24 report, with an adjusted growth rate of new cases above 5 per cent. According to the tracker, which accounts for “day of the week effects,” this has spread to 11 Indian states by December 26 “as well as other variations.
India recorded 9,195 Covid cases today, the most in three weeks, bringing the overall confirmed cases tally to 34.8 million. So far, 4,80,592 people have died as a result of this catastrophe. Despite the fact that just 781 cases of the highly modified omicron have been detected thus far, the government is already preparing to prevent another huge outbreak.
It approved booster doses and included teenagers aged 15 to 18 in the immunisation programme last week. Merck & Co. and partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LP created two new vaccines as well as the antiviral tablet molnupiravir, which was authorised by the local drug regulator on December 27.
The Cambridge India tracker accurately predicted the peak of this catastrophic second wave in May this year, as well as a slow burn in India’s COVID-19 infections curve until vaccine coverage was sufficiently high. In October, India administered 1 billion COVID-19 vaccination doses as a result of which new cases significantly dropped.