New Delhi: A member of a central government committee tasked with providing projections estimated that the Coronavirus may hit half of the country’s population of 1.3 billion by next February.
Till now India has reported around 7.75 million cases of the deadly coronavirus with more than 6.6 million recoveries and around one lakh and fifteen thousand deaths. The country stands at second position after the US in terms of cases, while the recovery rate is surging at 88.6%.
COVID-19 infections are decreasing in India after a peak in mid-September, with 61,390 new cases reported on average each day, according to a Reuters.
Manindra Agrawal, a professor at the Indian Institute for Technology in Kanpur and a committee member said, “Our mathematical model estimates that around 30% of the population is currently infected and it could go up to 50% by February”.
The committee's estimate for the current spread of the virus is much higher than the central government's serological surveys, which showed that only around 14 per cent of the population had been infected, as of September.
But Agrawal said serological surveys might not be able to get sampling absolutely correct because of the sheer size of the population that they were surveying.
The projections may not hold up if precautions were not followed, and cases could spike by up to 2.6 million infections in a single month if measures such as social distancing and wearing masks were ignored, the committee warned.
As Hindu festivals like Durga Puja and Diwali are coming up in late October and mid-November, there are chances that the infections could rise in the festive season.