SBI report says third coronavirus wave could be as severe as the second

An SBI report on Tuesday warned that a potential third wave of the coronavirus could be as dangerous as the second wave and could last up to 98 days.

However, the report further added that the death count during the third wave can be limited to 40,000 compared to 1.7 lakh in second wave if the number of serious cases in the third wave don't shoot up beyond 5%. The number of serious cases in second wave were as high as 20%.

The second wave of the coronavirus, which is on the wane, saw record jump in daily case count with the highest being 4.14 lakh cases.


SBI economists have predicted that the FY22 economic growth will come in at 7.9%, a sharp reduction from its earlier estimate of 10.4% growth.

The impact of the second wave played a major role in downgrading the forecast. "… our analysis shows a disproportionately larger impact on the economy this time and given that rural is not as resilient as urban, the pick-up in pent-up demand is unlikely to make a large difference in FY22 GDP estimates, and hence it could only be a modest pick-up," they said.

The economists said that an upward bias exists to the number if the vaccination drive reaches to one crore vaccines per day in July.

A number of agencies have brought down their FY22 GDP growth estimates factoring in the impact of the second wave.