Scientists predict second COVID-19 wave to peak between April 15-20

Scientists are now working on a mathematical model to examine the COVID19 spread and have predicted that the current second wave will peak somewhere between April 1520 and then see a declineThe number of active symptomatic cases during this period would hit a high roughly a week later at the same level of around 10 lakh cases that the country had seen in September last year said the scientistsThey have predicted after using a mathematical model that the ongoing secondwave of COVID19 pandemic across the country may see a steep decline by the end of MayDuring the first wave of COVID19 infections across India the mathematical approach named SUTRA predicted that the initial surge of infections in August would peak by September and lower in February 2021Scientists including Prof Manindra Agrawal from the Indian Institute of Technology IIT Kanpur applied the model to predict the trajectory of the current surge in infections and found that the number of daily new infections was likely to peak in midApril for this ongoing pandemic waveProf Agrawal in the IITs Department of Computer Science and Engineering was involved with the national super model initiative and said that the peak is expected to see between 8000090000 new infections per dayWe will cross the peak during April 1520 and then there will be very a sharp drop over the next 1520 days said AgrawalThe national super model had in October last year predicted the pandemic can be controlled by early 2021 with minimal active symptomatic infections in FebruaryAsked about the possible explanation of the second wave Agrawal said there were two reasons or possibly the combination of the two that might explain what changed in February which could make it for the sharp riseHe said that it could be due to gatherings linked to opening up of schools colleges and other working areas where people became comparatively more careless and the fact that there are some mutations which are spreading fasterHowever like with the first wave of the COVID19 pandemic the trajectory of fresh infections would depend on a lot of other factors including measures rolled out by the government and adherence to safety protocols by the publicA warning in the original prediction by the expert committee in their super model may still apply if the number of COVID19 cases starts declining in the fourth week of AprilThe warning was However this number will start rising again if proper practices of masking disinfecting tracing and quarantine are not followed The downward trend will continue only if we continue with above practicesIn the mathematical model used to predict the Covid wave there are parameters which measure the rate of spread or the contact rate which may explain how many people could be infected on an average by one infected personAgrawal noted that the model uses three main parameters to predict the course of the pandemicThe first is called Beta or contact rate which measures how many people an infected person infects per day It is related to the Rnaught value which is the number of people an infected person spreads the virus to over the course of their infectionThe other two parameters he explained are Reach which is a measure of exposure level of the population to the pandemic and Epsilon which is the ratio of detected and undetected casesThe contact rate had doubled in March and that may be contributing to the very steep rise said AgrawalThe super model in October had come out with conditional prediction It had predicted that the COVID19 would be completely under control provided people continue to observe the same precautions such as practices of masking disinfecting tracing and quarantineHowever the IIT Kanpur professor added that the prediction of the new peak is sensitive to the daily new infections dataEven a little bit of change each day causes the peak numbers to change by several thousand numbersThe reason we had to introduce Reach is that unlike earlier pandemics which start at a location and suddenly spread fast across a place but in Covid the spread of the pandemic has been slower due to the many protective measures in place Agrawal explainedHe further said that the Epsilon helps factor in the number of asymptomatic infections across the country We try to estimate the undetected and asymptomatic infections he addedThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever