The Daily Tally of Coronaviruses in India is likely to rise once the Omicron begins replacing Delta as the dominant variant, according to the members of the National COVID 19 Supermodel Committee, who predicted the third wave in the country early next year.
The daily caseload is currently at around 7,500 infections. The panel's head, Vidyasagar, said India will have the third wave of Omicron but it will be milder than the second wave.
In India, a third wave is expected to arrive early next year. It should be milder than the second wave due to the large-scale immunity present in the country. There is going to be a third wave. We're at around 7,500 cases per day, which is sure to go up once Omicron starts displacing Delta as the dominant variant, he told ANI.
Vidyasagar, who is also a professor at IIT Hyderabad, stated that it is improbable that India will witness more daily cases than the second wave.
It is extremely unlikely that the third wave will see more daily cases than the second wave. The Government of India started vaccinating ordinary Indians i.e. The Delta variant hit just about the time that front-line workers began on March 1, which was just before the time that front-line workers started. The Delta variant hit a population that was 100 per cent vaccine-naive, other than the frontline workers, he noted.
Vidyasagar added that a small percentage of the population hasn't come into contact with delta strain, as per a sero-survey.
We have a sero-prevalence of 75 per cent to 80 per cent prior exposure first dose for 85 per cent of adults, two doses for 55 per cent of adults and a reach for the epidemic of 95 per cent, meaning that only a tiny portion of the public has not come into contact with the virus, the IIT professor stated.
The third wave will not see as many daily cases as the second wave. Vidyasagar said that we have built up our capacity based on that experience, so we should be able to cope without difficulty.
He stated that the number of cases would depend on two factors, each of which is currently unidentified.
What is the extent to which Omicron bypasses the natural immunity obtained by prior exposure to Delta, Vidyasagar said.
The second reason is that the IIT professor stated that the extent to which Omicron bypasses the immunity conferred by vaccination is not known.
We have generated various scenarios based on the assumption that 100 per cent of the vaccine protection remains, or only 50 per cent remains, or all of it goes away. The same for natural immunity escape. Vidyasagar noted that for each scenario, we project the number of cases that could result.
In the worst-case scenario, India will not have more than two lakh cases per day in the event of the third wave gripping the country, he said.
The panel's other member, Maninda Agrawal, told the news agency that India is expected to report one lakh to two lakh cases per day, which will be less than the second wave.