DNA Exclusive: Has 3rd Covid wave already hit India?

New Delhi: India witnessed a tremendous jump in daily COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, which has triggered the question - 'Will this lead to a third wave?'

Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary on Thursday (December 30) warned about the imminent threat of the third COVID-19 wave amid a surge in daily infections. Sudhir Chaudhary also warned against attending big gatherings on New Year, that can get you in contact with coronavirus.

In India, new COVID-19 cases increased by 40 per cent in the last 24 hours. For the first time in 34 days, more than 10,000 people were found infected in a single day.

Nearly 7,000 new COVID-19 cases were found in India on December 25, and four days later, on December 29, this number climbed over 13,000. These figures indicate that there can be an explosion of coronavirus infections in the coming days.

The number of new patients has already risen by 86 per cent in Delhi and 82 per cent in Mumbai, the two cities that also account for the highest number of Omicron infections in the country. Therefore, it is likely that the highly transmissible Omicron variant is driving these daily cases.

India registered its first Omicron case on December 2, and after 28 days, the number of Omicron-infected patients has reached 961. The actual figures may be higher, as Omicron cases can only be detected after genome sequencing. It seems, from these figures, that the third wave of coronavirus is not far away.

The Cambridge tracker which provided apt information about the second wave in India has predicted that the third wave has already hit the country.  However, the tracker says that the third wave will not be very long and will be over by January end or the first week of February.

According to IIT Kanpur, India will see the peak of the third wave in the first week of February, during which a maximum of 1-2 lakh cases will be logged every day. However, IIT Kanpur also estimates that the third wave will last for one to one-and-a-half months unlike the deadly second wave that lasted for 3-4 months.