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What is the second wave of coronavirus? Did India reach the second wave with the highest number of daily cases for the last four days? Read the explanation here.

Pandemics, at any scale, are generally known to affect the population in waves before they die down. This happens globally as well as regionally. With many states in India recording the biggest daily spike in coronavirus cases for a week, the second wave is being among the talks.

Earlier in August, Maharashtra has shown the signs of decline in the daily numbers with the daily figures falling below 8000.

However, in the last two weeks, Maharashtra has seen a large jump in cases with the daily number crossing 16000 over the weekend.

Delhi which has also noted the flattening of the COVID curve by touching an all-time low of 652 cases in a day on August 16 has gone back to reporting 1000 cases daily crossing the 2000-mark on Sunday.

Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, and Odisha too are reporting many more cases than they were reporting a few weeks ago. In some areas of the country, the spike in the daily cases is attributed to the increase in testing. The cases in Telangana, Karnataka, and Odisha can be explained this way but what about the other places which are reporting a high number of cases.

What is somewhat coincidental is the expansion of Unlocks and complacency among people in their approach towards COVID-19.

The second wave of the pandemic is not a distinctly defined phase. It is generally taken as a stage where the disease appears to be alleviating before the infections start to shoot up from a different locality.

In India, the national tally of COVID-19 has not shown any major decrease for a considerable amount of time. The general trend has been of lower numbers of confirmed fresh COVID-19 cases being reported on Mondays.

What appears to be happening in the case of India is that the coronavirus lockdown has significantly delayed the pandemic peak.

However, some states and the regions within them might have experienced the incoming of the second wave like Kerala, Odisha, and Goa.

There is yet another explanation for the second wave in India which may be less fatal than the original one.

Theoretical explanation of the Second Wave:

The virus is also an organism and like human beings, it needs to survive to be able to live.

According to this, the coronavirus will evolve with the progress of the pandemic to ensure its long survival.

The other view is that the population makes necessary arrangements like social distancing, using face masks to itself safe when the second wave arrives.

A worrying factor for India is the growing number of daily cases for a week. The growth rate of the infections stood at 13.1 percent in the last week making a long jump from 4.7 percent the previous week.

The COVID-19 fatality rate in the country too increased from 1.3 percent to 3.9 percent.

India’s single-day high is only about 5500 cases fewer than the grand total of confirmed cases recorded by China.

Also read: COVID-19 under control by Diwali

By Gayatri Yellayi