India may see second wave of COVID-19 outbreak in late July-August, say scientists
By: Team Ifairer | Posted: 25-04-2020
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The lockdown is currently upon us. It has given us valuable time. Let us test, trace, quarantine, isolate, practice better hygiene, search for a vaccine, etc. We should do these anyway, and these are being done. When and how to lift the lockdown is going to be a difficult decision to make, said Sundaresan. It's clear that it's going to be phased. What our team is focusing on is to come up with tools to help the decision makers assess the public health impact of various choices, he said.
According to the experts, infectious diseases spread via contact between infectious and susceptible people. In the absence of any control measures, an outbreak will grow as long as the average number of people infected by each infectious person is more than one. Once enough people are immune there will be fewer people susceptible to the infection and the outbreak will die. However, when an outbreak is brought under control by social distancing and other interventions, it is possible only a small proportion of the population will have been infected and gained immunity, they said. This means enough susceptible people may remain to fuel a second wave if controls are relaxed and infection is reintroduced.
Until the vaccine comes on the market, we have to remain alert Once sporadic cases occur here and there in the country, we immediately need to implement quarantine or social distancing locally for the people in that region, and also need to perform tests to identify positive cases irrespective of showing symptoms, Bhattacharya explained. Note that these monsoon months are also flu season in many places of India. So, we should not ignore the early signs of the flu symptoms. Irrespective of symptoms, we need to increase tests in the hotspots to identify people and contain the surge, he said. Sundaresan added that the timeline for a second wave will depend on a lot of circumstances which may change as the time passes.
Significant testing may have been underway, there may be behavioural changes with people becoming more careful about their hygiene, wearing masks may become more common, etc. All these responses may help restrict the second wave, he said. A study published in The Lancet journal earlier this month modelled the potential adverse consequences of premature relaxation of interventions, and found it might lead to a second wave of infections. The finding is critical to governments globally, because it warns against premature relaxation of strict interventions, the researchers said. While interventions to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 are in place, countries will need to work toward returning to normalcy; thus, knowledge of the effect of each intervention is urgently required, they said in the study.
According to a recent analysis by the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, the best strategy to ease the critical care burden and loss of life from COVID-19 might be on-again, off-again social distancing. In the absence of such interventions, surveillance and intermittent distancing may need to be maintained into 2022, which would present a substantial social and economic burden, the researchers wrote.