India may see a worsening of its Covid-19 outbreak as soon as this month, according to a mathematical model by researchers who accurately predicted the second wave peak earlier this year.
The new coronavirus wave may peak in October, according to estimates by researchers led by Mathukumalli Vidyasagar and Manindra Agrawal at the Indian Institute of Technology in Hyderabad and Kanpur.
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In the fresh Covid wave, in the best-case scenario, India will likely see less than 1,00,000 infections a day, or nearly 1,50,000 in the worst case.
States with high Covid rates, such as Kerala and Maharashtra, could "skew the picture," Vidyasagar told Bloomberg.
The forecast underscores the need for India to accelerate its vaccination campaign, deploy surveillance methods to catch emerging hotspots and stay vigilant through genome sequencing given the potential for new variants to emerge.
Meanwhile, India reported 40,134 new Covid cases and 422 deaths in the last 24 hours, according to health ministry data on Monday morning. At present, there are above 4 lakh active Covid-19 cases, which is 1.3 per cent of the total infections. The fatality rate now stands at 1.34 per cent and the recovery rate is 97.36 per cent.