Omicron to last for 4 months: SUTRA

Hyderabad: The Omicron variant driven Covid third wave in the country is expected to last for four months with infections gradually beginning to surge in January and February and peak in the early weeks of March before the numbers dip by the end of April. The updated SUTRA mathematical projection of pandemics, developed by researchers […]

Hyderabad: The Omicron variant driven Covid third wave in the country is expected to last for four months with infections gradually beginning to surge in January and February and peak in the early weeks of March before the numbers dip by the end of April.

The updated SUTRA mathematical projection of pandemics, developed by researchers from IIT-Kanpur and IIT-Hyderabad, has indicated that the peak of the third wave will be somewhere in the first week of March with anywhere between 1.8 lakh and 2 lakh Covid infections getting reported from across the country in a single day.

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The SUTRA projections clearly indicate that the third wave is unlikely to be as severe as the second Covid wave, which was driven by the Delta variant. The second wave in the country peaked at 4 lakh infections in a single day while the third wave due to Omicron is expected to peak at 1.8 lakh to 2 lakh infections, the SUTRA model said.

The third wave, however, is expected to be bigger than the first wave, as the first wave had peaked between 90,000 and 1,00,000 cases in a single day. In terms of severity, the Omicron driven Covid-19 infections in the upcoming months would see fewer hospitalisations and deaths. The SUTRA model has projected that 1 out of 10 Omicron positive infections in the country would need hospitalisation while during the second Covid wave, 1 out of 5 cases needed hospitalisation. “During Delta-wave, about 1 in 5 reported cases required hospitalisation in India. With Omicron, the hospitalisations have gone down by a factor of at least two in South Arica, the UK, Denmark. So we assume that 1 in 10 cases would require hospitalisation in India. Peak requirement of hospital beds is less than 2 lakh beds in mid-March,” IIT-Kanpur researcher and founding member, SUTRA, Dr Manindra Agrawal said. Interestingly, the IIT-Kanpur and IIT-Hyderabad researchers said that about 20 per cent of naturally immune individuals could lose immunity and get infected by the Omicron variant.

The researchers pointed out that India is quite similar to South Africa in some crucial aspects, including a younger population and both having high natural immunity, which is around 80 per cent. There are, however, vital differences between the two countries, as South Africa has lower vaccine immunity than India.

The Pfizer vaccine was the primary vaccine in South Africa while Covishield was the primary vaccine in India. “In terms of hospitalisations and deaths, Omicron variants could be less than the Delta variant. The updated SUTRA model projections have not assumed any type of lockdown that brings down the value of infections further. Of course, whether the assumptions made are correct will only be known once Omicron spreads widely in India,” the researchers made it clear.

Also read:

10 Omicron positive passengers recover in Telangana

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