A scientist in a government panel has stated that the third wave of Covid19 can strike somewhere near October. The scientist, Prof Manindra Agrawal also predicted that the third wave can hit a peak in the time-frame of October-November.

The panel has been tasked with modelling the cases of Covid19 in India. Prof. Agrawal is working on the Sutra Model, which is a mathematical projection of the Covid19 trajectory. The panel is working on prediction of the behaviour of the virus. He said that the third wave will see half the daily cases seen during the second surge.

Last year, Department of science and technology had formed the panel to forecast the surge in Coronavirus cases using mathematical models.

Other members of the panel are M Vidyasagar, a scientist from IIT-Hyderabad, and Lt General Madhuri Kanitkar, Deputy Chief (medical) of Integrated defence staff.

Prof. Agrawal, however, cautioned that emergence of a new strain can fasten the spread during the third wave.

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In one of his tweets, Prof Agrawal highlighted that the panel has mapped out three scenarios-optimistic, intermediate and pessimistic. The optimistic scenario is that the life gets back to normal by August and there is no emergence of new strain. The intermediate scenario is that vaccination is 20% less effective in addition to the optimistic scenario’s assumptions. The pessimistic scenario includes that there is an emergence of a 25% more infectious strain in August. He highlighted that the mutant strain he was referring to, is not delta+ (which is not more infectious than delta).

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In a statement, Prof. Agrawal posted the bottomline, “If there is no significantly faster spreading mutant, third wave will be a ripple. And if there is such a mutant, the third wave will be comparable to the first one. However, if there is an immunity-escaped mutant, all of the above scenarios will be invalid!”

The panel was in the centre of a debate- storm when it failed to predict the second wave of Covid19 that ravaged through the country in April and May.

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Sutra model

Sutra stands for Suspected, undetected, tested(positive) and Removed Approach. This approach was taken by the National Covid19 supermodel committee. In October 2020, it had caught public attention when it informed that India had crossed the Covid19 peak. The prediction of the committee on the second wave failed that led to huge Oxygen crisis, and discovery of deadbodies in rivers in UP. The committee had accepted that it had failed to predict the nature of the second wave of Covid19. Rapid changes or mutations in the virus were attributed as a reason of failure of prediction of the second wave.