PM was warned about COVID's re-emergence in March: Supermodel Committee

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and top Indian officials were warned by the COVID-19 supermodel committee in early March about the second COVID wave and how it was expected to peak during the middle of May, as per The Print's report.

According to the head of the National Covid-19 Supermodel Committee, M. Vidyasagar, professor at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hyderabad, the panel gave "informal inputs starting around the first week of March, and gave a formal input on April 2nd".

The three-member National Covid-19 Supermodel Committee was formed by the central government to make projections about the spatial and temporal spread of the pandemic. Apart from professor M. Vidyasagar, the panel includes professor Manindra Agrawal of IIT Kanpur, and Lt. Gen. Madhuri Kanitkar, deputy chief of Army Medical Services.

According to the panel's current projections, the seven-day moving average of daily cases is expected to peak by early next week, at around 4 lakh, give or take 20,000 cases.

"We do not directly estimate the number of deaths, but at current levels, the number of daily fatalities would be around 4,000," he said.

"Please note that the case fatality ratio in the second wave is lower than in the first. That has been true in other countries as well," he added.

The world's second-most populous country is now struggling to contain a second wave of infections much more severe than its first last year, which some scientists say is being accelerated by the new variant and another variant first detected in Britain. India reported 401,993 new cases on Friday, a global record.