NEW DELHI, Dec 28: India may see a spurt in the COVID-19 growth rate within days and head into an intense but short-lived virus wave as the highly infectious Omicron variant moves through the crowded nation of almost 140 crore.
“It is likely that India will see a period of explosive growth in daily cases and that the intense growth phase will be relatively short,” Professor Paul Kattuman from the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge, which has developed a COVID-19 India tracker, wrote in an e-mail.
“New infections will begin to rise in a few days, possibly within this week,” he said, adding that it was hard to predict how high the daily cases could go.
Prof Kattuman and his team of researchers, developers of the India COVID-19 tracker, are seeing a sharp rise in infection rates across India.
The tracker spotlighted six states as a ‘significant concern’ in a December 24 note, with adjusted growth rate of new cases exceeding 5 per cent. This had expanded to 11 Indian states by December 26, according to the tracker, which corrects for “day of the week effects” and other variations.
So far, 653 cases of Omicron have been identified in India. (Agencies)
