India has been surfaced with a slew of predictions about when the country will hit by the third wave of the pandemic and such predictions have begun to raise concerns for the past few months amid the horrendous second wave. While the previous presages were in a fashion that the third wave would be more severe than the preceding one, the latest forecast has said that the third wave won't be worse than the second wave and the cases may cross 1.50 lakh per day during the peak of the third wave. 

The latest forecast was done by the researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology in Hyderabad and Kanpur. The researchers had predicted that the Covid cases may rise significantly by the end of August during which the third wave will begin in the country and the prediction expects that the third wave would attain its peak in October and it is less likely that it would pose more danger than the horrendous second wave. 

According to a report published by Bloomberg, researchers Mathukumalli Vidyasagar and Manindra Agarwal of the Indian Institute of Technology have predicted that the third wave of the pandemic will hit the country by the end of August and it will be smaller in magnitude compared to the second wave. It is noteworthy that earlier this year, Vidyasagar and Agarwal had successfully predicted the second wave and its decline in the national caseload. 

As their prediction for the second wave was too close to what the country has experienced, their latest forecast has drawn major attention and rang an alarm to the state and the Union governments to be prepared to tackle the third wave of the pandemic. As per the Bloomberg report, the IIT researchers had said that during the peak of the next wave, less than 1 lakh infections can be reported in the country per day in the best-case scenario and in the worst-case scenario, nearly 1.50 lakh cases will be recorded per day. 

The forecast done by the researchers had also suggested the government ramp up the vaccination drive, roll out adequate containment and surveillance measures to test, trace, and identify the emerging hotspots and amplify genome sequencing, given the potential for new variants to emerge. According to the Union Health Ministry, India has administered over 47 crore doses of Covid-19 vaccines. On the front of percentile, only seven per cent of the population has been fully vaccinated so far. 

According to the Covid-19 data, India has reported 40,134 new Covid-19 cases and 422 deaths in the last 24 hours till Monday morning 8 am and with the latest reporting, India's total Covid-19 tally has increased to 3.16 crore while the death toll has surged to 4.24 lakh. In June this year, AIIMS Delhi Chief Dr Randeep Guleria has issued a warning over the emergence of the third wave. His prediction of the third wave has also come closer to the end of August. 

He said, "As we have started unlocking, there is again a lack of Covid-appropriate behaviour. We don't seem to have learned from what happened between the first and second waves. Again crowds are building up and people are gathering." "It will take some time for the number of cases to start rising at the national level. Third-wave is inevitable and it could hit the country within the next six to eight weeks...maybe a little longer", he added. He further asked the people to keep their containment guard to tackle the third wave of the pandemic.