Third wave round the corner as COVID-19 cases see 7.5% surge

New Delhi, Aug 02: India has reported a 7.5 per cent surge in the number of COVID-19 cases, indicating that a third wave is round the corner. In the current weekend India reports 2.86 lakh cases when compared to the 2.66 lakh last year.

The surge however is restricted to Kerala to a large extent and slightly to Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Kerala alone had last week logged 1.4 lakh cases. The state accounted to half of all the new cases in the country in the last seven days.

What is worrying is that the cases from Kerala are spilling out to neighbouring states like Karnataka which has witnessed a 17.3 per cent increase. The positive side is that Maharashtra has reported a reduction in the number of cases thanks to a 6.2 per cent decline.

India is likely to witness a rise in COVID-19 cases as soon as August. The best case scenario would be 1 lakh cases a day and the worst would be 1.5 lakh according to a report.

Bloomberg while citing a report by Mathukumalli Vidyasagar and Manindra Agrawal at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Hyderabad and Kanpur respectively said that the the surge in cases would push a third wave and this may peak in August.

However the third wave is unlikely to be as brutal as the second when India reported 4 lakh plus cases daily.

"Our predictions are that the peak will come within a few days. As per current projections, we should hit 20,000 cases per day by the end of June. We will revise this as needed," Vidyasagar, a professor at IIT Hyderabad told Bloomberg.