As medical experts are busy trying to develop a vaccine to contain the coronavirus pandemic, a new study conducted by a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has claimed that India will soon top the pandemic chaos chart with more than 280,000 positive cases every day by February 2021. Scientists revealed that this dreaded situation will arise if health experts fail to develop a vaccine that will effectively contain the spread of this virus.
India New Hotbed for Coronavirus
In the initial days of the coronavirus outbreak, it was the United States and Italy that faced the ultimate chaos unleashed by the deadly pandemic. However, recent trends indicate that India is rapidly emerging as the hotbed of the coronavirus outbreak with more than 7,69,000 positive cases, and 21,100 deaths.
During this new study, researchers made use of SEIR (Susceptible, Exposed, Infectious, Recovered) model to predict the spread of coronavirus in the coming months. The study report also revealed that the total number of COVID-19 positive cases in the world could surpass 25 crores by May 2021, if a vaccine remains elusive.
Researchers claimed that India will be followed by the United States with more than 95,000 daily positive cases, while South Africa and Iran will record 21,000 and 17,000 daily cases respectively.
"Both these scenarios project a very large burden of new cases in the fall (September-November) 2020, with hundreds of millions of cases concentrated in a few countries estimated to have insufficient responses given perceived risks (primarily India, but also Bangladesh, Pakistan, and USA). In contrast, changes in response policies would make a major difference. While actual cases are far greater than official reports suggest, the majority of people remain susceptible. Waiting for herd immunity is not a viable path out of the current pandemic," wrote the researchers in their study report.
Rural India to Face The Heat
A few days back, Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute and professor of health policy at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health had warned that coronavirus is still in its early stages of the outbreak, and the real chaos is yet to unfold. According to Jha, the initial days of the coronavirus outbreak was confined to urban areas, and the pandemic will now slowly start affecting people living in rural areas.
