A study has revealed that Bengaluru and Mumbai could witness the second wave of Coronavirus after the lockdown is lifted on May 3rd if aggressive tracing and testing is not done.
The forecast has been made by 18 scientists from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai.
The methodology of the Forecast
Several adjustable parameters, such as disease progression parameters, plus daily contact rate are set. The settings are then passed through 11 ‘intervention’ settings, including no government intervention to an infinite lockdown, a lockdown for 25 days, and a lockdown for 40 days. The settings are simulated as per the exact realistic situation right now.
Modeling has been done as on March 25th, the day nationwide lockdown was announced by PM Modi. As per the report, if there is no intervention at all, the number of fatalities in the city would be about 28 by May 1st. If the lockdown is lifted, the number of deaths in Bengaluru could be 23 by July 1st and 33 by August 1st.
As per the latest data, 4 deaths have been reported in Bengaluru so far.
The settings do not consider ‘Testing’ Pace
The scientists, however, said that the data does not include the factors of aggressive tracing and testing, which would obviously lead to lesser fatalities.
Professor Rajesh Sundaresan of the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, IISc, one of the authors said:
“If there are 10 million people in Bengaluru, the city’s model also has that many individuals and the model also takes into account population densities, age distribution, household size distribution, commute distances, and several other parameters.“
In every tested scenario though, the scientists have assumed that the cases would be isolated with 90% compliance.
Source: Deccan Herald
