India Lockdown The third wave of the COVID-19 Omicron pandemic in India may peak by February 3, 2022, claims a modelling study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. As per IIT Kanpur statement India may be expected one more lockdown in month of February.
However, the forecast is based on the assumption that India will follow the trends of rise in cases seen in many countries globally driven by the Omicron variant of coronavirus. The yet-to-be peer-reviewed study, posted on the preprint repository MedRxiv on December 21, used a statistical tool named the Gaussian Mixture model to forecast the third wave.
In their study, the researchers used data from countries such as the US, UK, Germany, and Russia that are already facing the third COVID-19 wave. They modelled the daily data of cases in these countries to predict the impact and timeline for the third wave in India.
The study also used the data from the first and second waves in India, considering the number of cases with respect to time. The model forecasts India’s third wave of COVID-19 to peak in the beginning of February 2022.
“The cases start rising around 15 December 2021 and the peak of the third wave will occur on Thursday, 3 February 2022,” they wrote in the research paper. The authors of the study noted that the conclusions are based on the assumptions that “a third wave of COVID-19 may hit the country, and will follow the trends happening around the world.
However, the researchers noted that the exact peak number of cases cannot be estimated accurately with the study as it did not consider the vaccination data of the population. The research team comprised of Sabara Parshad Rajeshbhai, Subhra Sankar Dhar, and Shalabh, all from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at IIT Kanpur.
Commercial airlines around the world cancelled more than 4,300 flights over the Christmas weekend, as a mounting wave of COVID-19 infections driven by the Omicron variant created greater uncertainty and misery for holiday travellers.
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Airline carriers globally scrapped at least 2,366 flights on Friday, which fell on Christmas Eve, according to a running tally on the flight-tracking website FlightAware.com; nearly 9,000 more flights were delayed. The latest development comes as COVID-19 infections have surged in several countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom and France in recent days, prompting the re-imposition of measures such as the use of masks, vaccination mandates and travel restrictions in several countries.
Daily COVID cases in Australia’s New South Wales top 6,000: Australia’s most populous state recorded more than 6,000 new COVID-19 cases for the first time Saturday, adding a somber note to Christmas celebrations.
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