50% Indians likely to have Covid by February: Govt panel

At least half of the country’s 1.3 billion people are likely to have been infected with Covid-19 by February 2021, helping slow the spread of the disease, a member of a Central government committee tasked with providing projections said on Monday. India has so far reported 7.55 million Covid-19 cases and is second only to the United States in terms of total infections.

 “Our mathematical model estimates that around 30% of the population is currently infected and it could go up to 50% by February,” Manindra Agrawal, a professor at the Indian Institute for Technology in Kanpur and a committee member, was quoted as saying by Reuters.

 The committee’s estimate for the current spread of the virus is much higher than the central government’s serological surveys, which showed that only around 14 per cent of the population had been infected, as of September. 

However, Agrawal said serological surveys might not be able to get sampling absolutely correct because of the sheer size of the population that they were surveying. Instead, the committee of virologists, scientists and other experts, whose report was made public on Sunday, has relied on a mathematical model.

 “We have evolved a new model which explicitly takes into account unreported cases, so we can divide infected people into two categories—reported cases and infections that do not get reported,” Agrawal said.

 The committee warned that their projections would not hold up if precautions were not followed, and cases could spike by up to 2.6 million infections in a single month if measures such as social distancing and wearing masks were ignored.

 Experts have warned that infections could rise in the country as the holiday season nears, with celebrations for the festivals of Durga Puja and Diwali due this month and in mid-November, respectively. 

With agency inputs