India’s brutal second wave of Covid-19 has barely receded and there’s already plenty of talk about the next wave of the pandemic, which has been at the centre stage of the country’s public discourse since March 2020, when our nation saw the first lockdown being imposed.

As most parts of the country have lifted almost all restrictions and schools have reopened in a majority of states, experts are predicting different scenarios for a possible third wave in the country. While in a report published on 23 August, the National Institute of Disaster Management warned that the third wave could be worse than an impending second wave and daily new case numbers could cross 6 lakh per day.

The Chief Scientist of the World Health Organization, Dr Soumya Swaminathan, said on August 25 that India could have reached some sort of endemicity where there is a low or moderate level of transmission going on with a few local ups and downs, but they were unlikely to be severe and certainly not like the devastating second wave.

Like Dr Swaminathan, a model study conducted by a team of scientists from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the Imperial College London, UK, had also claimed on 23 June that a potential third wave would unlikely be as severe as the third wave.

While many health experts in the country have been warning since May that the possible third wave of Covid19 in India could severely affect children, both the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the Indian Academy of Paediatrics (IAP) have said that it was highly unlikely that the third wave will predominantly or exclusively affect children.

The Director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Dr Randeep Guleria, who hailed the observations of the IAP, reiterated a few days ago that he did not think that children would have a severe infection in the coming wave or would be the ones most infected.

Even as India recorded the highest single-day rise in nearly two months on Saturday and the number of daily cases hovered around the 50-mark in Darjeeling district, experts in north Bengal almost unanimously observed that the third wave might not be as huge as the second.

Dr Sharmistha Bhattacherjee, Head of the Department of Community Medicine at the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital, who agreed with Dr Swaminathan and the ICMR study, felt that the third wave might not be as devastating as the second wave as people in the country had developed some kind of immunity against the disease.

“As the findings of the fourth national serosurvey by the ICMR has revealed, about two-thirds of our population, including children, have developed antibodies against the virus causing Covid-19, while nearly 40 crore people are still vulnerable. As the report suggests, people are developing both natural and acquired immunity against Covid-19 mainly because of vaccination and symptomatic or asymptomatic infections.

The emergence of a third wave could be significantly challenged by expanding vaccination as vaccines would prevent severe disease, hospitalization and death. Things may look up soon if we watch out for variants, follow the Covid protocols strictly, develop herd immunity among at least 70 per cent of our population and adopt proper, effective and adequate measures to prevent the spread of the virus.

The day may not be far away when Covid will become a harmless seasonal infection like the common cold,” she hoped. A senior professor of the Department of Biotechnology, University of North Bengal, Dr Ranadhir Chakraborty, who shared Dr Bhattacherjee’s views said the third wave would not be as worse as the second wave as things had changed since April this year.

“The good news is that the coronavirus is not mutating as fast as it was doing before. The offsprings of the Delta variant, which was almost solely responsible for both normal and breakthrough infections during the second wave in the country, have not spread that fast. Most people have not dropped their guard as they did after the first wave. Not many people are now hesitant to get the Covid-19 vaccines.

The vaccines are now available at affordable prices in private vaccination centres also and the vaccination drive has picked up pace with improved supplies. India is now second only to China in terms of vaccination. A total of 62.6 crore people have been vaccinated in the country and on Friday India hit a record 1,03,00,992 doses of anti-Covid jabs till 10.00 pm,” he pointed out.

The veteran microbiologist felt that the virus might not spread very rapidly during the third wave as India was predominantly a rural country. “According to the 2001 Indian census, 74 per cent of Indians live in 638,365 different villages. The overall spread of the virus in the country is, therefore, most likely to be limited as urbanization is yet to pick up in India and the houses in the rural areas are much far apart from one another as compared to the houses in cities,” he said.

A renowned surgeon of Siliguri, Dr Kaushik Bhattacharya, who shared Dr Chakraborty’s feelings, said that vaccination was the most important tool to end the Covid-19 pandemic. “A sizable section of our population has developed immunity after two devastating waves and we seem to have passed through all the five stages of the KüblerRoss grief model, namely denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance and have become more aware and vigilant now.

Also since schools have not fully reopened all over the country the third wave may not be very severe if it comes now. But we should not forget that India recorded over 40,000 Covid-19 cases for the fourth day in a row today
and we must, therefore, persistently and consistently follow the Covid protocols and do not hesitate to take vaccines,” he cautioned.