1.26 lakh COVID-19 positive cases by May 31, claims new model of assessment

Migrant workers, who arrived from Maharashtra state, wait to board a buses to reach their hometowns during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 coronavirus. (AFP Photo)

Over 1.26 lakh COVID-19 positive cases are likely to be reported in 15 states by May 31, claimed a new model of assessment developed by a team of researchers from IIT-Guwahati and Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore.

The IIT Guwahati on Monday said the team used data science models to analyse and predict the total number of cases in the next 30 days. The report solely based on anyone model can potentially mislead us. So the team have considered the exponential, the logistic, and the Susceptible Infectious Susceptible (SIS) models, along with the model-free daily infection-rate (DIR) using open-source data. They have interpreted the results jointly from the models rather than individually," said a statement issued by IIT Guwahati.

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The assessment was carried out by Palash Ghosh, assistant professor of mathematics, IIT Guwahati and his phd scholar Rik Ghosh and Bibhash Chakraborty, associate professor of Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore.

According to their assessment, Maharastra could top the chart with 43, 963 COVID-19 positive cases followed by Gujarat (33,736), Delhi (9650), Uttar Pradesh (6566), Madhya Pradesh (6521), Rajasthan (6125), Andhra Pradesh (4725), Tamil Nadu (3967), West Bengal (3225), Karnataka (3711), Telangana (1631), Jammu and Kashmir (1124), Kerala (740), Punjab (713), Harayana (590).

"Their report is based on the growth of active cases in recent times, along with the daily infection-rate (DIR) values for each state. They label a state as severe if a non-decreasing trend in DIR values is observed over the last two weeks along with a near exponential growth in active infected cases; as moderate if an almost decreasing trend in DIR values is observed over the last two weeks along with neither increasing nor decreasing growth in active infected cases; and as controlled if a decreasing trend in the last two weeks’ DIR values is observed along with a decreasing growth in active infected cases, it said.

The team agrued that, despite the nation-wide lockdown, people are still out of home for essential businesses, which can contribute to the spreading of the virus.