Write a report on "India and Third Covid wave".
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hIndia has reported 58,097 new daily COVID-19 cases, twice the number seen only four days ago, with a top health official in the national capital saying the pandemic’s third wave in the country “has set in”.
Deaths rose by 534, including the southern state of Kerala’s updated death toll of 423, lifting the national total to 482,551, according to the health ministry data on Wednesday.
The total number of cases officially reported so far are more than 35 million, as the highly transmissible Omicron variant begins to overtake Delta, a strain first discovered in India.
Health experts say the third wave may not be as severe. "A third wave is imminent but the combination of past exposure, climbing vaccination coverage rates, and low reported severity of omicron infections should hopefully result in a more muted problem than we saw during the second wave.In the major Indian cities, the Omicron variant of the coronavirus is accounting for more than 50 per cent of the fresh cases of the infection and the massive surge in the number of cases over the last one week is indicative of a third wave of the pandemic, as is being witnessed in several countries, Dr N K Arora, the chairman of the COVID-19 working group of the NTAGI, said on Tuesday.Omicron is being detected in most of the states in the country, he told PTI.
Noting that in the major metro centres and the surrounding regions, the new variant of the virus is accounting for over 50 per cent of the fresh cases, Arora said, "The galloping increase in the number of Covid cases over the last one week is indicative of the third wave, as is being seen in several other countries across the globe."