According to a member of a government appointed-committee tasked with providing a blueprint said on Monday, that at least half of India’s 1.3 billion population are likely to have been infected with the new coronavirus by next February. This will help in slowing the spread of the disease.
So far 7.55 million cases of the coronavirus have been reported in India and have the second-largest count after the United States in terms of total infections which leads in the world. But Covid-19 infections in India are witnessing a downward trend after reaching a peak in mid-September, with 61,390 new cases reported on average each day, according to a Reuters tally.
“Our mathematical model estimates that around 30% of the population is currently infected and it could go up to 50% by February,” Manindra Agrawal, a professor at the Indian Institute for Technology in Kanpur and a committee member, told Reuters.
The committee estimates that the current spread of the virus is at a much higher rate than the federal government’s serological surveys, which showed that only around 14 per cent of the population had been infected, as of September.
But professor Agrawal said serological surveys might not be able to get sampling correct because of the sheer size of the population that they were surveying. Instead, the committee of virologists, scientists and other experts, whose report was made public on Sunday, has depended on a mathematical model.
“We have evolved a new model which explicitly takes into account unreported cases, so we can divide infected people into two categories – reported cases and infections that do not get reported,” Agrawal said.
The committee has also warned that their predictions would not hold up if COVID-19 safety protocols and precautions were not followed. The cases could have spiked by up to 2.6 million infections in a single month if measures like social distancing and wearing masks were overlooked.
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As the holiday and festival season nears in India with celebrations for the Hindu festivals of Durga Puja and Diwali due this month and in mid-November, experts have cautioned that infection cases could increase.
Coronavirus cases tally rose to 75,50,273 on Monday with 55,722 new cases in 24 hours, the lowest in five days. The country’s death toll increased by 579 to 1,14,610 while active cases stood at 7,72,055. The total recoveries have reached to 66,63,608. The recovery rate stood at 88.26% and the mortality rate was 1.52%.