In Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, with the cases of Covid-19 steeply piling up, influ-enza experts and epidemiologists are of the opinion that the third wave will peak in a month, the period feared to shoot up the number of hospitalisation due to ‘thousands and thousands getting infected’.
Prof Parvaiz Koul, Director of Soura Institute of Medical Sciences and an influenza expert, said tak-ing into account the case rise, the experience of other places hit by the wave and modulations, it is likely that the Wave will peak by mid-February and the cases would start coming down after that till the end of the month and hopefully, it will be over in March.
Prof Koul said the wave will peak faster than the first and second waves and the curve will be “far sharper”. “Look at how the cases have reached over 3000 in just two weeks,” he said.
Prof S Saleem Khan, Head of Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at GMC, Srinagar, on the same note said that the current wave was moving towards a peak fast. “In the first wave, it took us over three months to record 1000 cases, which reduced to 25 days in the second wave.
This time, it just took 13 days,” he said. He said the Third Wave could peak anytime between Febru-ary 1 and 10 if restrictions are put in place.
“It may peak even before that if there are no restrictions given the pace of rise of infections,” he said.
He said that it has been seen that lockdowns and restrictions on the mixing of people makes the waves less steep. “That way, the peak could be de-ferred and it could also reduce the impact on health-care services,” he said.
Prof Naveed Nazir Shah, Head Department of Chest Medicine at GMC Srinagar said the number of patients requiring admissions was “very low” at present. “Even with 5000 plus active cases, we have nearly the same number of patients we had a month ago,” he said.
He said that the circulating variant, which pos-sibly could be Omicron, was “less virulent”, how-ever, adding that as the number of cases piles up, it could rise.—KMS
