Arvind Kejriwal to hold meetings with experts on Covid third wave

New Delhi, June 04: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has called two meetings on Friday to discuss preparations for the possible third wave of coronavirus. "The CM will meet the expert committee at 11 and the preparation committee at 3," the CM's office said in a tweet.

The Delhi government had on May 27 set up a 13-member committee to prepare an action plan for a possible third wave of COVID-19 after assessing the current status and projected requirement of the health infrastructure such as hospitals, oxygen plants and drug supplies in the city.

Another eight-member expert committee was set up to devise a strategy for mitigation and management of the third wave of COVID-19.

This comes days after Centre's top scientific adviser Dr K Vijay Raghavan proclaimed that the third wave of coronavirus is "inevitable".

"Phase three is inevitable given the higher levels of circulating virus, but it is not clear on what time-scale this phase three will occur. We should be prepared for new waves," said K Vijay Raghavan, the principal scientific advisor to the Centre.

The third wave of COVID-19 in India could be as severe as the second one, a report has said.

A report by SBI said that the third wave will not be much different from the second one. However deaths can be minimised with better preparations, the report also said.

"Average duration of third wave for top countries is 98 days and that of second wave is 108 days, with 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 second wave witnessed 1.7 lakh, but with better preparedness the same during the third wave can be reduced to 40,000 if there is better preparedness. The report added that the death rate can be reduced by ramping up health infrastructure and rigorously expanding the vaccination drive.