Third Covid wave in India could be as severe as second: Report

NEW DELHI: The third wave of Covid-19 could be just as severe as the second wave and can last up to 98 days, an SBI report said on Tuesday.

Citing international experience, the SBI Ecowrap report estimated that the intensity of the third wave won't be much different than the second wave. However, it said that deaths can be minimised with better preparedness.

"Average duration of the third wave for top countries is 98 days and that of the second wave is 108 days, with the third-wave peak as a multiple of second at 1.8 and second wave as a multiple of first at 5.2 (for India it was at 4.2)," the report said.

The report comes as India prepares for a likely third wave of the pandemic.

The second wave of the pandemic, which is now on the wane, caused unprecedented devastation with single-day cases reaching as high as 4.14 lakh.

India recorded nearly 90.3 lakh Covid cases in May, by far the highest monthly count reported in any country so far.

Although infections steadily declined through the second half of the month, the numbers overall were so high that the case count in May was 30% higher than the previous record of 69.4 lakh, also reported in India in the month of April.

India also registered over 1.2 lakh deaths due to Covid in May alone.

The report said that in the third wave, the total number of deaths can be reduced to 40,000 compared to 1.7 lakh seen during the second wave if serious cases decline to 5%. In the second wave, the serious cases were as high as 20% of all infections.

It added this can be done by ramping up health infrastructure and rigorously expanding the vaccination drive.

Currently, just over 12.3% of the people have received at least one dose of the vaccine while 3.27% have been fully vaccinated.

The government is targeting up to 1 crore vaccinations per day by mid-July or early August.