Omicron Will Trigger 3rd Wave In India From This Month, Will Be Milder: Covid Supermodel Panel

It’s been two years now that the tiny but mighty virus started ruling the world. Only when things start coming back to normal, the virus resurfaces with a new variant. Now it’s the turn of Omicron to disrupt the world.

Third wave of the pandemic is likely to start early next year

According to members of the National Covid-19 Supermodel Committee, there will be definitely a third wave of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in India once the Omicron variant starts replacing Delta as the dominant strain.

As per Mr. Vidyasagar, the head of the Covid Supermodel panel, the third wave, driven by Omicron, is likely to arrive early next year and peak in February.

“Third wave is likely to arrive early next year in India. It should be milder than the second wave due to a large-scale immunity present in the country now. There will definitely be a third wave. Right now, we are at around 7,500 cases per day which is sure to go up once Omicron starts displacing Delta as the dominant variant,” Mr. Vidyasagar said.

According to him, India witnessing more daily infection than the second Covid wave is “extremely unlikely”. Citing the seroprevalence data in India, the IIT professor further stated only a tiny fraction of the public has not come into contact with the coronavirus.

“So the third wave will not see as many as daily cases as the second wave. We have also built up our capacity based on that experience, so we should be able to cope without difficulty,” he added further. Mr. Vidyasagar also said that the number of cases would depend on the ability of Omicron to escape vaccine-induced immunity and natural immunity by prior exposure to the virus.

UK cannot be a reference for virus penetration in India

According to another panel member, Maninda Agrawal said India is expected to report one lakh to two lakh cases per day which will be less than the second wave.

“The UK also has an older population as well as more problems with obesity etc. This is why yesterday the UK had 93,045 cases while India, with 20 times the population, had 7,145 cases. In my view, people trying to draw inferences about what would happen in India, based on what is happening in the UK, would be making a major error,” Agrawal added further.

Over 100 cases of Omicron have been detected in India so far. Recently, NITI Aayog member (Health) Dr V K Paul cited the steep rise in infections in Britain to sound alarm bells. Paul said the population-level conversion would mean 14 lakh daily Covid cases in India.