Third Wave Staring At Us? India's COVID-19 Case Trajectory Shows Worrying Trend

India faced a severe second wave of Covid-19 infections starting February. The seven-day average of daily new infections rose 36 times between February 11 and May 9, which is when the second wave peaked. Daily new cases have since fallen sharply, however, the recent trajectory has shown some worrying signs.

As per the data shared by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), there has been been a slowdown in the downward trend of daily COVID infections and a slight increase in the positivity rate.

PTI

Why is it worrisome?

This is worrisome and all the more important given the anecdotal accounts of Covid-inappropriate behaviour from many places, especially tourist destinations.

The Central government has expressed grave concerns over crowds thronging markets and hill stations over the past few days. It has now warned of reimposing lockdown-like restrictions in places where people are found to be blatantly breaking the rules put in place to contain coronavirus outbreaks.

Firstly, new infections are not rising, but they also are not falling fast enough. Secondly, the positivity rate has already reversed its falling trajectory. The seven-day average of daily positivity rates hit a high of 22.76% on May 9.

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Third, the all-India numbers hide the divergence across states. The 7-day average of new cases has been rising in six small north-eastern states and Kerala. Positivity rates have risen in 11 states and UTs over the last week. Lastly, districts in other states are affected too.

Out of 707 districts for which data is compiled by How India Lives (Delhi¡¯s districts are merged as one), the 7-day average of cases has increased in 63 districts between June 20 and July 6; 36 of them are from the eight north-eastern states, and 18 from Kerala, Maharashtra, and Odisha. But cases have increased in a few districts even in other states in the past two weeks.

What do the recent numbers say?

On June 24, the 7-day-average of daily and active cases in India was 53,123 and 683,544 respectively. Two weeks later, on July 7, these numbers were 42,547 and 486,415, the lowest since the peak of the second wave.

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This shows that we are still on the downward path of the second wave. To be sure, the latest numbers are much higher than the lowest number of daily new cases (10,988) and total active cases (138,837) seen after the peak of the first wave.

What is worrying about the current situation is that the nature of the infection's curve changed a month ago. The 7-day average of new cases was declining at the rate of 6.7% per day on June 2. New cases are declining at a much slower rate now.

Third wave prediction

A research report has predicted that India may witness the third wave of COVID-19 in mid-August 2021, raising the alarm bells for policymakers and citizens. The report, COVID-19: The race to finishing line, prepared by SBI Research, claims that the COVID third wave peak will arrive in the month of September 2021.

PTI

According to the SBI report, the global data shows that on average, peak COVID-19 cases reached during the third wave are nearly twice or 1.7 times those from the second wave of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, India has witnessed 43,393 new COVID-19 cases, 44,459 recoveries, and 911 deaths in the last 24 hours, as per the latest update by the Health Ministry on Friday morning.