While there is already an impending third wave of COVID-19, a Hyderabad-based researcher has said that the third wave might have set in on July 4. According to a Times of India report, the researcher has analysed daily data on new infections and deaths over the last 15 months.
The researcher, Dr Vipin Srivatsava, who is an eminent physicist and former pro-vice-chancellor, University of Hyderabad, pointed out that the pattern of the new coronavirus cases and deaths since July 4 mirrors the graph of the first week of February 2021, when the second wave started in the country.
In his one of the metrics analysed by the researcher showed the signs of the onset of a new wave, which according to him, might soon pick up if coronavirus protocols such as social distancing, hand sanitising, using of masks, and vaccination are ignored. The wave pattern unraveled after the researcher mapped daily Covid-19 data in the last 460 days.
The metric named, ‘Daily Death Load’ (DDL), was calculated by taking the ratio of the number of coronavirus deaths and new active cases in the same 24-hour period.
The report quoted Dr Srivatsava as saying, “When I plot this ratio as a function of time, I find that it exhibits wild fluctuations whenever there is a crossover from one scenario to another in the plot for the number of daily Covid deaths.”
In the reports, the doctor further explains that when the number of deaths was very high in May 2021, the DDL fluctuated wildly during a 10-day period between May 6 and May 17. This signalled that a crossover was about to occur, following which the DDL went down and showed small favorable negative and positive values, and also marked a decrease in daily deaths as the second wave peaked.
Accordig to the report, since July 4, the DDL seemed to be fluctuating as it did during the onset of the second wave in mid-February.
Meanwhile, with 37,154 new coronavirus infections, India's total tally of COVID-19 cases rose to 3,08,74,376, while the total recoveries crossed three crore, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Monday. The death toll climbed to 4,08,764 with 724 fresh fatalities.
The active cases have declined to 4,50,899 and comprise 1.46 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate has increased to 97.22 per cent, the data updated at 8 am showed.
