Fourth wave of Covid-19 to last for 4 months in India from June: Study

New Delhi: As the third wave of the coronavirus epidemic in India begins to fade, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT-K) estimate that the fourth wave will arrive around June 22.

According to IIT-K experts, the fourth covid-19 wave will hit India in mid- to late-June, and the spike would last for nearly four months. The intensity of the outbreak, however, will be determined by the appearance of new strains, vaccination status, and booster dose administration.

Sabara Parshad Rajeshbhai, Subhra Sankar Dhar, and Shalabh of IIT Kanpur’s Mathametic department led this study, which used a blend of Gaussian distributions based on data from Zimbabwe.

This IIT-K study was released as a pre-print on MedRxiv and is still undergoing peer review.

When will India be hit by the fourth Covid wave?According to the researchers, the data indicates that the fourth wave of Covid-19 in India will arrive after 936 days from the initial data availability date, which is January 30, 2020. “Therefore, the fourth wave starts from June 22, 2022, reaching its peak on August 23, 2022 and ends on October 24, 2022,” they said.

“Moreover, the 99% confidence interval for the date, when the curve will reach the peak, is approximately from August 15, 2022 to August 31, 2022,” the researchers added.

How severe will be this wave?

The study said that there is a good chance that a new variant of coronavirus may emerge and can have an intense impact on the whole analysis. “The intensity of the impact will depend on various factors like infectibility, fatality etc,” the authors said.

The authors also highlighted that the effect of vaccinations – first, second or booster dosage can also play a significant role on the possibility of infection.

How is the next variant likely to emerge?

Other than the IIT-K study, another research has shown that the next Covid-19 variant can emerge in 2 different ways. The authors also emphasised that there is no guarantee that the new variant will be less severe than the previously identified ones, they pointed out.

First, Omicron is still evolving, resulting in an Omicron-plus variation that is worse than BA.1 or BA.2. The second option, according to Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary virologist at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, is that a new, unrelated variety emerges.