Thursday, March 28, 2024

Third Wave of Covid-19 is unlikely to be as severe as Second, says a study





A modelling study conducted by a team of scientists from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and Imperial College London, United Kingdom, states that a possible third wave of Covid infections is unlikely to be as severe as the second wave.

“Consequently, for a virus to cause a major third wave in the face of this pre-existing immunity, extreme scenarios for the abrogation of that immunity are required, or for that matter, for the transmission fitness of any novel virus,” says the article in the Indian Journal of Medical Research.

The study pointed out that the rapid increase in vaccination efforts could play an essential role in mitigating current and future waves of disease and suggested that vaccine rollout should be done in a way that 40 percent of the population is covered over a period of three months with two doses. 

The study further  suggested that for the third wave to be as devastating as second, at least 30 percent of the population who had been infected earlier must entirely lose their immunity, or an emerging variant of the virus must have a reproductive rate (R) over 4.5, that is, each infected person should be spreading virus to at least 4-5 others and this should happen almost immediately after the second wave ends.

For their analysis, the scientists did not use — as most forecasting attempts — the reported daily caseload numbers from previous months. 

“In the present approach, we considered essentially a uniform waning rate over the spectrum of severity. Second, the basic reproduction number (equivalently, the rate-of-transmission) was assumed to remain constant during each wave,” said the scientists explaining the methodology used in the study.

However, The study also cautioned that crowding, reckless behaviour, and “Lockdown-release mechanisms could be a plausible driver for a third wave in India”


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