ICMR reject study claiming India will see COVID-19 peak in mid-November
NEW DELHI : The ICMR on Monday rejected as “misleading” a news report which attributed a study to the top medical body claiming that the peak stage of COVID-19 pandemic in India may arrive around mid-November.
A study that claims that the peak of coronavirus in India has been delayed by the eight-week lockdown and may now arrive around mid-November has been disowned by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), which said today that it does not reflect its official position.
Taking to Twitter, the Indian Council of Medical Research distanced itself from the study and said that it does not reflect the official position of the government body. “The news reports attributing this study to ICMR are misleading. This refers to a non peer reviewed modelling, not carried out by ICMR and does not reflect the official position of ICMR,” it said in the tweet.
Citing an ICMR study, news agency PTI earlier today reported that the peak stage of COVID-19 in India has been delayed by the eight-week lock down, and it may now arrive around mid-November when a paucity of isolation and ICU beds and ventilators can arise.
The report referred to a study, conducted by researchers from an operations research group constituted by the ICMR saying the “lock down shifted the peak by an estimated 34 days to 76 days and helped bring down the number of infections by between 69% and 97% thereby allowing time to shore up resources and health infrastructure.”
On June 9, ICMR had dismissed media reports based on another survey, that showed that up to one-third of the people living in containment zones and hotspots may have already been infected with Covid-19 and may have also recovered.
The survey had claimed that the spread of the infection was so widespread in some districts that even containment efforts had failed to curb the outbreak. However, the council called the findings of the sero survey “speculative” and said that “survey results [are] yet to be finalised”.
Meanwhile, the total number of coronavirus cases in India jumped to over 3.32 lakh on Monday after the country recorded a spike of over 11,000 infections for the third consecutive day. The tally rose to 3,32,424 with 11,502 new infections in the last 24 hours, the Health Ministry said. The toll increased to 9,520 with 325 more deaths, according to the ministry.
There are 1,53,106 active cases, while 1,69,797 people have recovered and a patient has migrated, according to the ministry data updated in the morning.
“In the scenario of intensified public health measures with 60 per cent effectiveness after lockdown, the demand can be met until the first week of November. After that, isolation beds could be inadequate for 5.4 months, ICU beds for 4.6 and ventilators for 3.9 months, projections by the health researchers showed,” the report said.
Arvind Pandey, one of the authors of the study and a member of National Task Force (Operations Research sub-group), told Newstrack23x7.com that the study has been withdrawn and another author, Shankar Pinjra, refused to comment.
