COVID-19 Fourth Wave India: IIT Kanpur experts predict 4th wave around June, peak in August

COVID-19 Fourth Wave India: COVID-19 fourth wave is predicted to begin in India around June 22 and expected to continue till October 24, as per IIT Kanpur experts. 

The fourth wave is predicted to last for at least four months, as per the researchers. The peak of the 4th wave of COVID-19 in India is expected to be from August 15 to 31 and decline after that. 

The statistical prediction was published on the preprint server MedRxiv on February 24.

Significance

The prediction by IIT Kanpur experts is significant, as it is the third time that they have predicted a Covid-19 wave in the country. Their predictions have been almost accurate even about the third wave of Covid-19. 

Will the 4th wave of Covid-19 be severe?

The severity of a fourth wave will depend on the emergence of new variants and the vaccination status of people including booster dose administration, as per the experts.

WHO epidemiologist and technical lead on Covid-19 Dr Maria Van Kerkhove has also warned that the next variant of COVID-19 will be more transmissible, and perhaps, more deadly than its predecessors because it will have to overtake what is currently circulating. 

Dr. Kerkhove stressed that the pandemic is far from over and future variants will be in some way more virulent than Omicron is now.

COVID fourth wave in India

• The 4th wave of Covid-19 is expected to begin in India around June 22 and continue till October 24 with peak on August 23. 
• The research was conducted by three researchers of mathematics and statistics departmet of IIT Kanpur- Subhra Sankar Dhar, Sabara Parshad Rajeshbhai and Shalabh.
• The team of researchers have used a  statistical model for their prediction. They used a method called “Bootstrap” to com- pute the confidence interval of the time point of the peak of a fourth wave.
• They said that fourth wave in India may arrive after 936 days from the initial data availability date of the Covid-19 outbreak, which is January 30, 2020 when the first case of COVID-19 was officially registered in India. 
• The method can be used to forecast a fourth and other waves in other countries as well.

Background

Several countries have already witnessed the third wave and a few have also started to face the fourth and higher waves of the pandemic. The third wave of Covid-19 was predicted in India using the concept of a mixture of Gaussian distribution based on the data of Zimbabwe.The forecast for the third wave was almost correct and motivated by the study, the researchers investigated the forecasting of a fourth wave in India. 

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