Dharamshala, 31st December: As the highly-infectious omicron version sweeps through the packed nation of over 1.4 billion people, India could see a spike in the Covid-19 growth rate within days, ushering in an intense but short-lived viral wave.
According to livemint, Paul Kattuman, a professor at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School, who developed the Covid-19 India tracker, wrote: “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, New infections will begin to rise in a few days, possibly within this week,” adding that it was hard to predict how high the daily cases could go. Infection rates are rising rapidly across India, according to Kattuman and his team of researchers, who developed the India Covid tracker.
Covid cases increased by 9,195 in India. Wednesday saw the largest number of new daily cases in three weeks, bringing the total number of confirmed illnesses to 34.8 million. To date, 480,592 people have died as a result of the disaster. Even though just 781 cases of the highly modified omicron have been detected so far, the country is already preparing to prevent another big outbreak.
On Tuesday, the Indian capital of New Delhi banned cinemas, schools, and gyms, as well as restricting public gatherings, a day after the city reported the highest number of new cases in more than four months. From 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., there will be a 50 percent occupancy rate in pubs, restaurants, and offices. On Tuesday, Mumbai, the country’s financial metropolis, reported a jump in new cases to 1,377.
These policy decisions highlight the difficult lessons India learned following a devastating delta-led viral outbreak in April and May, which saw infections reach a record-breaking 400,000 per day. It flooded the country’s hospitals and crematoriums, leaving locals begging on social media for oxygen and other medical supplies.