Third wave will be ‘ripple’ in absence of faster spreading mutant: IIT study

The third wave of COVID-19 will be a “ripple” but only if there is no significantly faster-spreading mutant, according to projections of the ‘Sutra’ model for COVID-19.

According to the Sutra analysis, if there is a faster-spreading mutant, the magnitude of the third wave will be “comparable to the first one.”

Maninder Agarwal, Professor, IIT Kanpur, who was part of the team of scientists behind the Sutra analysis, said that they have created three scenarios.

“The third wave will be a ripple. If there is no significantly faster-spreading mutant, the third wave will be a ripple and if there is such a mutant, the third wave will be comparable to the first one,” he said.

“The optimistic one – where we assume that life goes back to normal by August, and there is no new mutant. Second the intermediate one – where we assume that vaccination is 20 per cent less effective in addition to optimistic scenario assumptions. Third pessimistic one – This has an assumption different from the intermediate one: a new 25 per cent more infectious mutant spreads in August,” he added.

As per the Sutra model, if there is an immunity escape mutant, all the above scenarios will be invalid.

Speaking further, the IIT Kanpur professor said, “First, loss of immunity in the recovered population, second vaccination-induced immunity. Each of these two needs to be estimated for future. And third, how to incorporate the two in the model.