Third wave within days?

New Delhi: India is likely to see a surge of Covid cases in a few days leading to a short, yet intense wave triggered by the new Omicron variant, a prediction by a team of scientists have suggested. The scientists said that they are seeing a sharp rise in infections across the country and called the surge in six States 'a significant concern' that will lead to third wave of the pandemic.

"It is likely that India will see a period of explosive growth in daily cases and that the intense growth phase will be relatively short," Paul Kattuman, Professor at the University of Cambridge which has developed a Covid-19 India tracker said.

"New infections will begin to rise in a few days, possibly within this week," Kattuman said, adding that it was hard to predict how high the daily cases could go.

Kattuman and his team of researchers, who have developed India Covid tracker, had spotted six States, with growth rate of new cases exceeding 5% as 'significant concern' in December 24. 

In two days, it expanded to 11 States.

India reported 9,195 new cases on Wednesday, which is the highest daily rise in three weeks. The total confirmed cases have increased to 3.48 crore while the total fatalities have reached 4.8 lakh. India has also reported 781 cases of Omicron across 19 States, according to the latest tally. Meanwhile, another study conducted by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur said that the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic in India could peak by February 3, 2022. As Omicron cases continue to grow, States have showed concern over the new variant with most of the States imposing night curfew.

In May this year, the Cambridge India tracker had correctly called the peak of the devastating second wave. It also forecast in August that India would see a slow burn in its Covid infections curve until the vaccination coverage was sufficiently high.

India had crossed 100 crore vaccination in October and new Covid infections plunged in tandem with that milestone.