India’s COVID-19 third wave likely to peak in 14 days: IIT Study

Scientists & researchers have been working to find out the timeline as to when the third wave will end and they might have the answer

While India has seen a decline in COVID-19 and the Omicron variant in the last few weeks, the main question remains, when will the country actually reach its peak of the third wave of coronavirus?

Scientists and researchers have been working to find out the timeline as to when this will end and they might have the answer.

Recently, in a preliminary analysis done by IIT Madras, India’s R-value was seen reduced to 1.57 in the week from January 14-21.

The R-value basically indicates the rate of spread of coronavirus, it tells you the number of people an infected person can spread the disease to. When the R-value goes below 1, it is considered as the end of the pandemic.

As per reports by IIT Madras, the R-value between January 14 and January 21 was recorded at 1.57. Between January 7-13 it was 2.2 while during January 1-6, the R-value was 4.

The preliminary analysis at IIT Madras was carried out by the Department of Mathematics and Centre of Excellence for Computational Mathematics and Data Science headed by Prof Neelesh S Upadhye and Prof S Sundar.

As per Dr Jayant Jha, Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics, IIT Madras, Mumbai and Kolkata are close to peaking since their R-value is close to 1 while Delhi and Chennai still have a long way to go.

He further said, “The reason for that could be that as per the new ICMR guidelines they have removed the requirement for contact tracing and therefore there are less infections as earlier.” He also added that the coronavirus peak is likely to come in the next 14 days till February 6.