There is a worrying trend of Covid-19 pattern in the country, said Dr Vipin Srivastava, former pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Hyderabad and prominent physicist, who anticipated the onset of the third wave of the pandemic on July 4.
The Covid-19 curve, which Dr Vipin postulated based on daily death load, has not only persisted since July 4, but has also gotten worse in recent weeks, reported the Times of India.
The DDL has gone towards more positive levels, which is unfavourable. It was positive 10 times in the 15 days from July 24 to August 7, and seven times in the last ten days. This indicates that, despite the officially published data, the third wave is getting worse.
Despite seropositivity in around two-thirds of the population, Dr Vipin has ruled out herd immunity in the country so far. The cause for concern is appearance of wild fluctuations in DDL since July 4. This is found to occur whenever there is a crossover in the scenario, i.e. when the number of daily deaths changes from an increasing trend to a decreasing one, or vice versa. However, an intriguing aspect of the ongoing big fluctuations in the DDL is that they are much wilder than the earlier ones and that they are not showing signs of settling down even after a month, he said.
The causes, according to Dr Vipin, may be partially due to the uncertainty surrounding the official data. While the number of deaths was adjusted a few times during the first wave of Covid-19, the doubts around this statistic appear to have grown exponentially following the second wave. This may be observed in the graph of daily Covid-19 deaths during the second wave, which shows large fluctuations.
