The country might witness a peak in Omicron cases on January 27, 2022, with a ‘pessimistic scenario’ pegging the daily tally of infections at 1.50-lakh cases. The wave could subside completely by March 28, 2022.

According to the team that developed the SUTRA model to assess and predict Omicron numbers, a ‘pessimistic scenario’ is one in which all the people that took the jab lose their immunity.

Limited data

In an ‘intermediary scenario’ (where 30 per cent of the vaccinated people retaining immunity), the country could witness about 1.30-lakh cases a day.

“We are not making any predictions on likely hospitalisations yet for want of evidence on the same,” M Vidyasagar, Distinguished Professor at IIT-H, told BusinessLine .

Referring to some alarmist studies on Omicron being reported of late, he said predictions not based on proper data “is not science”.

Also see: Gujarat reports two more Omicron Covid variant cases, India’s tally up to 25

In an ‘optimistic scenario’ (where about 60 per cent of people retain their immunity), the country might report about 1.10 to 1.20-lakh cases a day.

In the latter two scenarios, peaks would be delayed by 1-3 weeks. Whatever the scenario maybe, the Omicron wave would die down by the end of March 2022.

The predictions were based on the current number of infections in India and how Omicron is spreading in various countries.

The team, which created a Covid tracker portal , felt that there was no point in imposing a blanket-ban on incoming air traffic as Omicron has already spread worldwide.

It, however, wanted 100 per cent screening of incoming passengers and called for sequencing of all positive cases for Omicron.

“We need to avoid knee-jerk reactions like shutting down schools and imposing lockdowns. They are not needed at the current state of the pandemic, even after the advent of Omicron,” the team said.

No predictions on hospitalisation

“Over last two weeks, cases in South Africa have gone up five times, but hospitalisations by only twice,” the SUTRA model said.

“Watching the South African numbers would allow us to make projections on what will happen with Omicron in India. We will revisit this item as more data becomes available,” it said.

Also see: Booster dose important for immunocompromised, elderly people: Medical experts

The report said that Omicron is roughly twice as infectious as delta but it has not been able to bypass natural immunity.

“That is why it did not cause an increase in cases until recently,” it said.

Covid tracker

The portal was launched formally by IIT-H Director B S Murty on Friday. Besides providing daily updates on case numbers, vaccinations and tests conducted in various States, the portal gives periodical predictions on Omicron and how the infection trajectory could move.

“We are sourcing data mainly from State bulletins, official social media handles like that of of Cowin and Union Ministry of Health,” said Bheemarjuna Reddy Tamma, Chair, Computer Centre, IITH.

“While the front-end of our website has the same user interface as that of the original website , the back-end was developed in-house by a group of enthusiastic students of IIT Hyderabad and maintained by the staff members of Computer Center, IIT Hyderabad,” he said.

Also see: Amid Omicron scare, Centre asks States to step up testing, surveillance

The website has been hosted on a public cloud platform to make it scalable and responsive even when web traffic shoots up.

Some of the critical updates are available in 10 Indian languages. In the beta phase, the portal attended to 1.8 crore requests from about 2.5 lakh visitors over the last 30 days.

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