Chennai: A public health expert has said there cannot be a uniform peak in COVID-19 cases in a large country like India and each state has its own trajectory based on when people there were exposed to the infection.
According to Director of the Indian Institute of Public Health (IIPH) Prof GV S Murthy, the peak could be witnessed in states like Delhi by this month-end or early August while it may be around September in others such as Tamilnadu, Maharashtra and Karnataka.
He said that in States, such as Jharkhand, it may take longer time as the spread has started only after the return of the migrant labourers, he said. Bihar seemed to be reporting a large number of cases suddenly after all those who migrated to other cities, specifically Mumbai and Delhi, started returning. It takes about 10-14 days for a Covid-19 person to infect others in their families and then the next wave of cases will happen.
While IIPH was set up under the aegis of the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), Murthy had established and headed the first community ophthalmology department in the public sector in the country at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences till 2010.
According to him, governments need to continue with measures to deal with the virus and the community also should strictly adhere to preventive guidelines such as washing hands and maintaining physical distancing.
Murthy stressed on taking intense steps in densely populated areas. States like Jharkhand (present total cases 7,564) and Chhattisgarh (6,819) and parts in eastern Uttar Pradesh too had reported much lower cases earlier but the spread would start occurring as the migrants have returned now to their homes.
He added: “There, the peak will take much longer. It would be somewhere towards the end of September or October that those states, which had low reporting earlier, will have a peak’. But, States like Haryana, Telangana, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu should be able to achieve the maximum number of cases by mid-September.”
He further said that all these States, which were reporting very high numbers now, should not be getting the same numbers beyond mid-September. Some states should achieve the peak by mid-August also. For example, Delhi seems to be on a path where, by the end of this month or early August, it can be said that the peak has been crossed.