As the team at IIT Kanpur predicts that a fourth COVID wave is likely to hit India in a few months, the next quivering question is whether the highly contagious Omicron will cause a BA.2 surge. Indicating otherwise, a recent study showed that BA.1 confers strong protection against BA.2 subvariants. Therefore, it is unlikely to cause a major wave of infection in communities that have experienced a BA.1 wave.
Omicron BA.1 provides protection from BA.2
Sarah Otto said, “If BA.2 arrives late in a community, when the BA.1 Omicron wave is nearly finished, keep BA.2 from driving another Omicron wave to BA.2 by Omicron transitions and/or boosting.” likely,” an evolutionary biologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver was quoted by the scientific journal Nature.
To study the effect of the subvariant, the authors — Trolls Lillebeck, a molecular epidemiologist at the State Serum Institute in Copenhagen — and his team looked to Danish medical registries.
And, they observed that the BA.2 subvariant has been circulating in Denmark since the beginning of this year, and currently comprises about 88% of all coronavirus cases. But the wave of BA.1 before BA.2 is providing protection.
What was the study of IIT Kanpur?
A recent study by a team of scientists from IIT Kanpur has suggested that the fourth Covid wave is likely to hit the country from mid-June, and this surge will continue for about 4 months, peaking in August .
The authors said the data indicates that the fourth wave of COVID-19 in India will arrive after 936 days from the initial data availability date, which is January 30, 2020. Its peak is on August 23, 2022 and ends on October 24, 2022,” he said and added, “Moreover, the 99% confidence interval for the date, when the curve will peak, is approximately August 15, 2022. is from. 31 August 2022.”
Regarding the severity of the next wave, he said the intensity would depend on various factors such as the infectivity, lethality etc. of the next version and the vaccination status across the country.
The study was led by Sabra Prasad Rajeshbhai, Shubhra Shankar Dhar and Shalabh from the Department of Mathematics, IIT Kanpur. It has been published as a pre-print in MedRxiv, but has yet to be reviewed.
what next?
Another study has indicated that the study shows that the next COVID variant may come out in 2 different ways. “Omicron will not be the final form of concern. There are two possible scenarios going forward,” said Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, as cited by Nature.
First, Omicron continues to evolve, producing some sort of Omicron-plus version that is worse than BA. 1 or B.A.2. The other possibility is that a new, unrelated version appears. The latter scenario is the one that has happened with each type of anxiety so far.
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