As the second wave of Covid-19 has gripped the country. Everybody is wishing that the number of cases goes down so that the patients can be managed properly and unnecessary deaths can be avoided. According to the scientists at the IIT Kanpur and IIT Hyderabad, the peak of the second wave will come around May 11-15 with 33-35 lakh total active cases and decline steeply by the end of May, according to a mathematical module devised by them.

On Friday, India saw a single-day rise of 3,32,730 (3.32 lakh) COVID-19 infections and 2,263 fatalities with 24,28,616 (24.28 lakh) active cases. In predicting that the active cases would go up by about 10 lakh by mid-May before sliding, scientists from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur and Hyderabad applied the Susceptible, Undetected, Tested (positive), and Removed Approach' (SUTRA) model. The scientists also said Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and Telangana may see a high of new cases by April 25-30, while Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh might already have reached their peak in new cases.

The SUTRA model takes several variables into the account. Whereas previous papers divided the patient population into asymptomatic and Infected, the new model also accounts for the fact that some fraction of asymptomatic patients could also be detected due to contact tracing and other such protocols.

Earlier this month, the mathematical modelling approach predicted that active infections in the country would peak by April 15 but this didn't come true. "The parameters in our model for the current phase are continuously drifting. So it is hard to get their value right," said Agrawal.

Even a little bit of change each day causes the peak numbers to change by several thousand," he explained.

There are other mathematical modules as well. Independent calculations by Gautam Menon and his team at Ashoka University in Haryana have predicted that the peak of the ongoing wave of infections could be between mid-April and mid-May.

Menon also cautioned that such projections of COVID-19 cases should really be trusted only in the short term. Any excessively precise prediction, of a peak within just a five-day window would ignore the many uncertainties associated with the inputs to any such calculation," Menon, who was not involved in the modelling, had told PTI earlier.