India has reported new coronavirus infections at an eight-month high and a government scientist warned it will take weeks before data on hospitalisations and deaths will show how severe the latest wave driven by the Omicron variant will be.

The federal authorities have said Omicron was causing fewer hospitalisations and deaths than the Delta variant, which killed hundreds of thousands last year.

But Tarun Bhatnagar from the ICMR-National Institute of Epidemiology in Chennai said the impact of the current run-up in infections will show up with a lag.

“We have to worry about hospitalisation and deaths and that will come later,” he told Reuters in a phone interview. “There will always be a lag of two-three weeks.”