Major second wave of COVID unlikely, claims expert

 “We might face a minor wave resulting in about a little more than 50,000 cases per day all India,” he said.

 According to him, the real magnitude of the pandemic may never be known, as contact tracing undertaken initially was given up for treating symptomatic cases and their contacts, especially family members. “This was because when the number of symptomatic cases increased, emphasis shifted to treatment and not on contact tracing. Even when treating family members of positive cases, only those who showed COVID symptoms were tested,” he said.

 In his view, the pandemic peaked in the third week of September. The ICMR second sero-survey was calculated with the base figure of 7 million treated cases multiplied by 26 to arrive at the actual symptomatic cases.

 “But when we consider that a larger population might have remained asymptomatic, we have to calculate at the rate of 7 million being multiplied by 50 so that we might get a figure which could be closer to reality,” he added.

 With the new cases in Tamil Nadu steadily declining to less than 3,000 per day, he said use of masks, hand sanitisers and following social distancing should be continued to ensure that the fall continued.