Fourth Wave of COVID-19 to Knock-in India

Fourth wave of COVID-19 is reported to hit India from June with its peak cases in August as per a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed study at the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur, posted on the preprint repository MedRxiv. The study used a statistical model to predict that the fourth COVID-19 wave may continue up to 4 months since June. Variant’s infectibility and fatality may further depend on the various other factors.

WHO (World Health Organization) officials had also lately warned about the emergence of a more deadly variant than Omicron. The Union Health Ministry had noted that there was a dip of less than 10,000 coronavirus infections for a single day (India’s total cases being 4,29,24,130) as reported on Monday.

"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," say the authors.

"Apart from this fact, the effect of vaccinations — first, second or booster dosage may also play a significant role on the possibility of infection, degree of infection and various issues related to the fourth wave," say the authors.

Several countries have already been hit by the third wave of COVID-19, and countries like South Africa and Zimbabwe are also warned to witness the surge of fourth wave of the pandemic.

Source-Medindia