Will there be 4th Covid wave in India? Experts weigh in

After four months, India recorded 2,994 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday, while the number of active cases increased to 16,354. According to Union health ministry data, with the fresh infections, India's Covid-19 tally stands at 4.47 crore. Meanwhile, the death toll climbed to 5,30,876 with nine deaths - two deaths each were reported from Delhi, Karnataka and Punjab, one from Gujarat, and two were reconciled by Kerala.

At 16,354, the active cases comprise 0.04 per cent of the total infections. The national COVID-19 recovery rate stands at 98.77 per cent, according to the health ministry website. The daily positivity rate was recorded at 2.09 per cent and the weekly positivity at 2.03 per cent, according to news agency PTI.

Despite fears of Covid cases shooting up in the last few weeks by 30-fold from a low base of fewer than 100 cases, there's some relief.

In a series of tweets, Covid data analyst, Vijayanand, explained that Omicron XBB 1.16 sublineage could be behind the recent surge in Covid-19 cases across the country.

''India covid cases trend shows small increase in last few weeks, the increase in trend is not rapid but slow, so this does not call for a new wave and its mostly due to Omicron XBB 1.16 sublineage. India had been dominated by other XBB sublineage before so no reason for concern,'' he wrote.

He had earlier claimed that ''The new XBB.1.16 Omicron Sublineage causing increase in cases in various parts of India, but this emerging variant is unlikely to cause waves because most of the population already are immune to XBB and Omicron, this is only sublineage. while H3N2 flu is still dominant wear mask if you wish to protect yourself,'' he said.

This variant was first detected in Pune in February this year and is said to be fast replacing the dominant strains in the country. Named officially as XBB.1.16 on March 5, the sub-variant rapidly transmits and has additional mutations in its nucleotide and amino acids.

"The XBB 1.16 subvariant is a highly transmissible variant with high infectivity rate. The subvariant has mutations on the amino acids and nucleotide space that gives it the capacity to escape hybrid immunity achieved by vaccination and previous exposure to the virus," Dr Charu Dutt Arora, Infectious Disease Specialist, Consultant Physician, AmeriHealth, Asian Hospital told Hindustan Times.

XBB.1.16 symptoms

Dr Arora, explained that the signs and symptoms of the new sub-variant are almost the same as that of Omicron variant.

"High grade fever for more than 48 hours, cough, sore throat, body pain, severe headache, cold and abdominal discomfort. There is no loss of smell or taste seen in the patients, so far. Most of them have mild to moderate disease and are being managed on home isolation," Dr Arora told Hindustan Times.