An IIT Hyderabad professor has revealed that the government was warned in advance that the second wave of coronavirus will peak around the middle of May.
In an exclusive conversation with NDTV, Dr M Vidyasagar, who is a professor at IIT Hyderabad and leads the Covid-19 Supermodel Committee, said, the Centre was given advance warning on April 2 of a surge in coronavirus cases.
He also said that the Centre was warned of a predicted peak of around 1.2 lakh new cases per day sometime between May 15-22. The timing of the peak was later revised to the first week of May. There were also questions raised on the Centre’s preparedness in the wake of a second wave given almost every country has been hit by it.
While the availability of oxygen and hospital beds still remain a concern, almost 15 days into the crisis, India might be showing signs of a plateau. The Union Health Ministry has said the surge in Covid-19 cases in some states including Delhi and Madhya Pradesh have shown early signs of plateauing in daily new infection cases.
However, an increasing trend in coronavirus cases were reported in states such as Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.
The central government is also exploring the feasibility of converting existing nitrogen plants to produce oxygen.
The daily Covid-19 cases in India showed a slight dip with 3,68,147 new coronavirus infections being reported in a day, taking the total tally of cases to 1,99,25,604, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Monday. The death toll increased to 2,18,959 with 3,417 daily new fatalities, the data showed. While the country recorded 4,01,993 new cases on May 1, it had registered 3,92,488 fresh cases on May 2.
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