India saw its Covid-19 infections reach an eight-month high on Wednesday amid warnings it will take weeks before its Omicron peak is reached.
Officials maintain Omicron is causing fewer hospitalisations and deaths than the Delta variant, which killed hundreds of thousands of people last year.
But government scientist Tarun Bhatngar, from the ICMR-National Institute of Epidemiology in Chennai, said the impact of the current surge of infections will show up with a lag.
He said: “We have to worry about hospitalisation and deaths and that will come later. There will always be a lag of two to three weeks.”
India recorded a further 282,970 new infections in the latest 24-hour period, its highest levels of Covid cases in eight months.
This brings the total to 37.9million coronavirus cases, which makes it second-highest in the world, behind the United States.
A further 441 deaths were recorded, including 83 from a previous wave that the southern state of Kerala is recording only now, making the nationally tally one of the highest this year.
While infection rates have recently fallen in India’s big cities, experts say cases nationally could peak by the middle of next month.
Around 70 per cent of its 939 million adult population has received two primary vaccine doses.
A booster campaign for health workers and at-risk population is underway.
But millions still await their first shot and Bhatnagar cited reports from some states that those unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated make up more than 90 per cent of intensive care patients.
India also reported on Wednesday the first major rise in Covid-19testing in a week after the health ministry warned states of the risks of missing the spread of the virus.
States performed about 1.9 million tests on Tuesday, the highest since January 12, and near India’s daily testing capacity of more than two million.
