The third wave of Covid-19 in the country will be a "ripple" if there is no significantly faster-spreading mutant, projections of the 'Sutra' model say. According to the Sutra analysis, if there is such a faster-spreading mutant, the third wave will be "comparable to the first one".
The scientists behind the ‘Sutra Model’ were earlier part of an expert panel set up by the Department of Science and Technology under the Government of India.
Three members of this erstwhile government panel came up with the ‘Sutra Model’ last year and has since made mathematical projections on the trajectory of the Covid cases. This is the ‘Susceptible, Undetected, Tested (positive), and Removed Approach’ (Sutra) to study the trajectory of the pandemic.
Maninder Agarwal, professor, IIT Kanpur, who was part of the team of scientists behind thia Sutra analysis, said that they have created three scenarios:
1. The optimistic one: Where we assume that life goes back to normal by August, and there is no new mutant.
2. The intermediate one: Where we assume that vaccination is 20 per cent less effective in addition to optimistic scenario assumptions.
3. The pessimistic one: This has one assumption different from intermediate one: a new, 25 per cent more infectious mutant spreads in August (it is not Delta Plus, which is not more infectious than delta).
"if there is an immunity-escape mutant, all the above scenarios will be invalid," the Sutra model says.