Coronavirus third wave likely this month, may peak in October: Report

New Delhi: India is likely to see a rise in Covid-19 infections building into a new — though smaller — virus wave that may peak in October, according to a mathematical model by researchers who accurately predicted the tapering of a brutal surge of cases earlier this year.

The country may see a worsening of its outbreak as soon as this month, with the next wave peaking in the best-case scenario with less than 1,00,000 infections a day, or nearly 1,50,000 in the worst scenario, according to estimates by researchers led by Mathukumalli Vidyasagar and Manindra Agrawal at Indian Institute of Technology in Hyderabad and Kanpur, respectively.

States with high Covid rates, such as Kerala and Maharashtra, could "skew the picture," Vidyasagar told Bloomberg in an email.

The next wave is likely to be far smaller than the second wave that peaked at a record 4,00,000-plus daily cases on May 7 and declined sharply thereafter. But the forecast still underscores the need for India to accelerate its vaccination campaign, deploy surveillance methods to catch emerging hotspots and stay vigilant through genome sequencing given the potential for new variants to emerge.

The delta strain, now causing renewed outbreaks across the world, was first identified in India last October.

Experts are concerned about complacency setting in as people resume social and business activity in the face of waning infections. India's first outbreak last year ebbed with limited damage, leading to a quick resumption of local travel and large-scale festivals that drove the emergence of a devastating second wave in March. With hospitals and crematoriums overwhelmed, researchers estimate that as many as 5 million people may have been killed in that outbreak. The government estimates that the total Covid-related fatalities so far are 4,24,351.

That last wave also led to high levels of natural immunity in the country's nearly 1.4 billion people — a factor that could blunt the impact of the next surge. A national antibody survey by the Indian Council of Medical Research study last month found that two-thirds of Indians above the age of six had been exposed to the coronavirus.

Five months after the last wave started, daily infections in India have plateaued at around the 40,000-daily mark. For the past five days, roughly half the new cases are coming from the southern state of Kerala, making it potentially the next hotspot.