Soon after the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic subsided across the world, people began to wonder if a fourth wave could hit the world in the coming months. Recently, experts have said that it is likely that the fourth Covid-19 wave will hit the world sometime in May or June.
Furthermore, scientists have weighed in on whether the fourth wave of the pandemic could be as severe and deadly as the second wave, which was led by the Delta version. Answering these questions, a scientist said that a new variant can be as dangerous as Delta.
Andrew Rambout, who studies viral evolution at the University of Edinburgh in Britain, spoke to the journal Nature and said that the next version of Kovid-19 could lead to serious infections like alpha and delta. “It is possible that the latter variant reverts to the delta or alpha lineage, which has sufficient immune evasion to overcome Omicron,” he said.
Scientists in India believe that the fourth wave of the Kovid-19 epidemic may knock in the country by June 2022. The researchers further said that the severity and impact of the new variant will depend on various factors such as infectivity and lethality of the variant.
“In addition to this fact, the effect of vaccination – the first, second or booster dose – may also play an important role on various issues related to the probability of infection, the degree of infection and the fourth wave,” the researchers said.
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur said that the fourth wave of Covid-19 will hit the country in June, and is likely to peak by the end of August. The paper, which is yet to be reviewed, suggests that the fourth wave will last four months.
The authors of the study said, “The data indicates that the fourth wave of COVID-19 in India will arrive after 936 days from the initial data availability date, which is January 30, 2020. Therefore, the fourth wave starts from June 22, 2022 reached its peak on August 23, 2022 and ended on October 24, 2022.