New studies say coronavirus outbreak will peak by mid-August and plateau

New findings by scientists seem to suggest that India’s Covid-19 outbreak will reach its peak by mid-August and plateau until eventually declining at an indeterminate point.

The evolving assessment comes even as scientists and epidemiologists across institutes are divided about when the potential peak will happen and what will be the shape of the curve in the aftermath.

For Dr T Jacob John, celebrated virologist, Christian Medical College, the curve is not a simple matter of reaching a peak and then plummeting. He told DH that based on earlier projections — that the number of cases would peak in August — he believed the epidemic would end in December or before. Now, he said, he thinks the virus will achieve endemic status in India by December or January or February 2021.

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“Curve flattening is meant to indicate delayed and stunted peak, but compared to what? That is the problem. If the peak is delayed beyond August, we could say the curve is flattened. If the peak is reached after four months of the epidemic (April-July) in August, there is no flattening. However, if delayed beyond August, there is some flattening. But we should note that the epidemic transitioning to endemic should not be mistaken for curve-flattening,” he said.

Professor Gautham Menon of Ashoka University, a member of the Indian Scientists’ Response to Covid-19 Group (ISRC), who helped build the INDSCI-SIM model to present what the Covid landscape would look like in the near future, said the curve would likely be more complex than what was initially believed.

While the INDSCI-SIM model shows the peak happening around August 22, what happens afterwards is a big gray area.

“Naturally, if the number of daily new cases is to decline after increasing, we do, of course, need a peak. However, whether this will be a single well-defined peak or a far more gradual one is an open question. I tend to believe the latter,” he said.

The problem is that it is not a simple matter of getting a slow but not smoothly decreasing decline, because the outbreak in different states had different progressions which were not in-lock step together, he explained.

“This means that we should look at a really granular scale, of districts and sub-districts and zones in cities, to understand the progression of the disease. Looking at India-wide numbers makes little sense even now, given that we know that the growth in numbers is dominated by a handful of states,” he explained.