India may face short spurt of cases due to Omicron

NEW DELHI • India may see a spurt in Covid-19 growth rate within days and head into an intense but short-lived virus wave as the highly infectious Omicron variant moves through the crowded nation of almost 1.4 billion.

"It is likely that India will see a period of explosive growth in daily cases and that the intense growth phase will be relatively short," said Professor Paul Kattuman of the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. "New infections will begin to rise in a few days, possibly within this week."

Prof Kattuman and his team of researchers - developers of the university's India Covid-19 tracker - are seeing a sharp rise in infection rates across India.

The tracker highlighted six states as a "significant concern" last Friday, with adjusted growth rate of new cases exceeding 5 per cent. This grew to 11 states by Sunday.

India is already gearing up to deal with another massive outbreak, though only 653 Omicron cases have been identified so far.

Last week, it allowed booster shots and included teenagers aged 15 to 18 in the inoculation programme. Two more vaccines and Merck & Co's antiviral pill molnupiravir were approved by the local drug regulator yesterday.

New Delhi closed cinemas, schools and gyms, and imposed curbs on public gatherings yesterday after reporting the most new cases in over four months.

The tracker correctly called the peak of India's devastating second virus wave in May and forecast in August that India would see a slow burn in its infections curve until vaccination coverage was high enough. India crossed one billion administered vaccine doses in October, and new cases plunged in tandem with that milestone.

BLOOMBERG