UP govt planning to ban PFI: Report

New Delhi, Apr 24: The trajectory of COVID-19 cases could have plateaued and might even fall for some weeks after the lockdown is lifted but India is likely to see a second wave in late July or August with a surge in the number of cases during the monsoon, say scientists.

The timing of the peak will depend on how India is able to control physical distancing and on the level of infection spreads after restrictions are relaxed, they said.

It looks apparent that the trajectory of daily new cases has reached a plateau and eventually it will take a downward fall, maybe for some weeks or even months, Samit Bhattacharya, associate professor at the Department of Mathematics, Shiv Nadar University, said.

Still, we may get a surge of new cases of the same coronavirus and this will be considered a second wave, Bhattacharya explained.

The second epidemic may come back in late July or August in the monsoon, although the peak timing will depend on how we control social distancing during that time, he said.

Rajesh Sundaresan, professor at Bengaluru's Indian Institute of Science (IISc), agreed.

“Once we return to normal activity levels, there is a chance that infection may begin to rise again. China is seeing this to some extent post easing of some restrictions on travel,” Sundaresan, corresponding author of a working paper by researchers at IISc and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai, said.

On March 25, when the number of coronavirus cases was 618 with 13 deaths, the government announced a nationwide lockdown that was later extended to May 3.

On Friday, the death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 718 and the number of cases to 23,077, according to the Union Health Ministry.

In good news, officials said this week that the doubling rate of cases has slowed down in the period, going from 3.4 days before lockdown to 7.5 days, with 18 states doing better than the national average. The recovery rate has also almost doubled in the last 10 days.

"Looking at the new cases in the past few days, it seems the growth of new daily infection is much slower than earlier. This apparently indicates that we might have reached at the plateau of the growth curve, Bhattacharya said.

He noted that recent studies in China and Europe observed that the infection might relapse in those people who have already recovered from earlier phases.

So, there is no evidence that the earlier infection may help acquire immunity against the second infection. And in that way, the entire population may be vulnerable to the second wave to some extent, said the scientist.

In their study unveiled this week, IISc and TIFR researchers analysed the impact of strategies such as case isolation, home quarantine, social distancing and various post-lockdown restrictions on COVID-19 that might remain in force for some time.

The study modelled on Bengaluru and Mumbai suggests the infection is likely to have a second wave and the public health threat will remain, unless steps are taken to aggressively trace, localise, isolate the cases, and prevent influx of new infections.

The new levels and the peaking times for healthcare demand depend on the levels of infection spreads in each city at the time of relaxation of restrictions, they said.

The lockdown is currently upon us. It has given us valuable time. Let us test, trace, quarantine, isolate, practice better hygiene, search for a vaccine, etc. We should do these anyway, and these are being done. When and how to lift the lockdown is going to be a difficult decision to make, said Sundaresan.

It's clear that it's going to be phased. What our team is focusing on is to come up with tools to help the decision makers assess the public health impact of various choices, he said.

According to the experts, infectious diseases spread via contact between infectious and susceptible people. In the absence of any control measures, an outbreak will grow as long as the average number of people infected by each infectious person is more than one.

Once enough people are immune there will be fewer people susceptible to the infection and the outbreak will die.

However, when an outbreak is brought under control by social distancing and other interventions, it is possible only a small proportion of the population will have been infected and gained immunity, they said.

This means enough susceptible people may remain to fuel a second wave if controls are relaxed and infection is reintroduced.

Until the vaccine comes on the market, we have to remain alert Once sporadic cases occur here and there in the country, we immediately need to implement quarantine or social distancing locally for the people in that region, and also need to perform tests to identify positive cases irrespective of showing symptoms, Bhattacharya explained.

Note that these monsoon months are also flu season in many places of India. So, we should not ignore the early signs of the flu symptoms. Irrespective of symptoms, we need to increase tests in the hotspots to identify people and contain the surge, he said.

Sundaresan added that the timeline for a second wave will depend on a lot of circumstances which may change as the time passes.

Significant testing may have been underway, there may be behavioural changes with people becoming more careful about their hygiene, wearing masks may become more common, etc. All these responses may help restrict the second wave, he said.

A study published in The Lancet journal earlier this month modelled the potential adverse consequences of premature relaxation of interventions, and found it might lead to a second wave of infections.

The finding is critical to governments globally, because it warns against premature relaxation of strict interventions, the researchers said.

While interventions to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 are in place, countries will need to work toward returning to normalcy; thus, knowledge of the effect of each intervention is urgently required, they said in the study.

According to a recent analysis by the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, the best strategy to ease the critical care burden and loss of life from COVID-19 might be on-again, off-again social distancing.

In the absence of such interventions, surveillance and intermittent distancing may need to be maintained into 2022, which would present a substantial social and economic burden, the researchers wrote.p

Kochi, Jan 11: Two of the four illegal apartment complexes were brought down by controlled implosion here on Saturday.

However, the other two apartments-- Golden Kayaloram and Jain Coral-- will be demolished on Sunday.

The demolition of the first building Holy Faith H2O, slated to be carried out at 11 am, was delayed by 18 minutes while the twin towers of Alfa Serene, which is surrounded by 36 houses, were brought down at 11.43 am.

As per authorities, as many as 343 kgs of explosives were used for the demolition of twin towers of Alfa Serene, which had 80 apartments and 16 floors each.

Section 144 has been imposed within a 200-metre radius of the complexes on Saturday and Sunday. Moreover, traffic has been halted on land, water and air in the evacuation zone during the process.

There are concerns that some concrete pieces of the second tower of the building may have fallen into the lake nearby. It is yet to be estimated if the debris or concrete pieces have affected the buildings nearby.

The four apartment complexes in Maradu were ordered to be demolished by the Supreme Court for violating the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) norms.

As many as employees of Zee News have tested positive for the coronavirus, Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary said on Monday. Most of them are asymptomatic, he said, tweeting an official statement from Zee News about the situation.

The organisation said that on May 15, one of its employees tested positive for the coronavirus. Following this, the company started testing employees who may have come in contact with the employee. Twenty-seven more were found to be infected.

“Fortunately most of them are asymptomatic and are not complaining of any discomfort,” Zee News said. “We believe this is because of early diagnosis and proactive intervention.”

The news network said all guidelines and protocols have been followed, and its office, newsroom and studios have been sealed for sanitisation. The Zee News team has been shifted to an alternative facility.

“At the moment, Zee Media Corporation has 2,500 employees, by far the largest in the private sector,” the company said. “We are committed to the safety of each one of them.”

Chaudhary also claimed that “those who are infected had the option of sitting at home and sharing memes”. “They came to work because they are committed professionals.”

Following this, some social media users claimed that Zee News employees found infected with Covid-19 were still at work. In response, Chaudhary alleged that a malicious campaign was being conducted to distort his statement. He said no infected employee had come to work, and all the contacts of the employee who tested positive on May 15 had been tested and quarantined.

Over the past two months, journalists from several media organisations have tested positive for the coronavirus. On April 21, 26 employees of a Tamil news channel based in Chennai tested positive for the coronavirus. The previous day, over 50 journalists from Mumbai were found infected, after samples of over 170 journalists were tested.

On May 7, a newspaper journalist died of the coronavirus in Agra. Some states, such as Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Delhi, have tested journalists for Covid-19.