India could see a spurt in Covid growth rate within days and move into an intense but short-lived virus wave as the omicron variant penetrates through the nation of almost 1.4 billion, according Paul Kattuman, professor at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge which has developed a Covid-19 India tracker as quoted by The Indian Express.

“It is likely that India will see a period of explosive growth in daily cases and that the intense growth phase will be relatively short,” wrote in an email. “New infections will begin to rise in a few days, possibly within this week,” he said, adding it is tough to predict how high the daily cases could go," he added.

Kattuman and his team of researchers, who formed the India Covid tracker, are seeing a sharp rise in infection rates in India.

“The tracker spotlighted six states as a “significant concern” in a December 24 note, with adjusted growth rate of new cases exceeding 5%. This had expanded to 11 Indian states by December 26, according to the tracker, which corrects for “day of the week effects” and other variations,” The Indian Express mentions.

India has recorded 781 cases of the omicron variant of coronavirus across 21 states and UTs so far out of which 241 people have recovered or migrated, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Wednesday.

Delhi recorded the maximum number of 238 cases followed by Maharashtra at 167, Gujarat 73, Kerala 65 and Telangana 62.

With 9,195 people testing positive for coronavirus infection in a day, India's total tally of COVID-19 cases rose to 3,48,08,886, while the active cases increased to 77,002, according to the data updated at 8 am.

The death toll has climbed to 4,80,592 with 302 fresh fatalities,the data stated.

The daily rise in new coronavirus infections has been recorded below 15,000 for the last 62 days now.

The active cases comprise 0.22 per cent of the total infections, the lowest since March 2020, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate was recorded at 98.40 per cent, the highest since March 2020, the ministry said.

An increase of 1,546 cases has been recorded in the active COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours.

The daily positivity rate was recorded at 0.79 per cent. It has been less than two per cent for last 86 days. The weekly positivity rate was also recorded at 0.68 per cent. It has been below one per cent for the last 45 days, according to the ministry.

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 3,42,51,292, while the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.38 per cent.

The cumulative doses administered in the country so far under the nationwide Covid -19 vaccination drive has exceeded 143.15 crore.