According to the researchers at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, after breaking the value of 1 in the first week of August, the R number, which reflects how rapidly the coronavirus pandemic is spreading, has been steadily subsiding.
Following this data, Sitbara Sinha, who is leading the research, said, “India’s R has fallen to around 0.9.”
The study says, if R is lesser than 1, it means the number of newly infected people is lower than the number of infected people in the previous period and the disease frequency is dropping.
Like the R-value of Kerala, which has the highest number of active cases in the country, is now below 1 after a gap of seven months which is signalling a relief to authorities who have been fighting hard to bring down infection level down in the state.
Sinha said, the northeastern states seem to have finally come out of the second wave. As calculated by the researchers, the R-value between August 14-16 now stands at 0.89.
According to the data the R-value for Maharashtra another state which has a high number of active cases is 0.89.
However, the R-value in Himachal Pradesh continues to be above 1, although it decreased in the last few days, while states like Tamil Nadu and Uttarakhand still have R very close to 1 said, Sinha.
Among the major cities, the R-value of Mumbai was lowest (0.70 from August 10-13), followed by Delhi (0.85 from July 31 to August 4), Bengaluru (0.94 from August 15-17), Chennai (0.97 from August 15-17). However, the R-value remains high for Kolkata (1.08 from August 11-15), Pune (1.05 from August 10-14).
How many people an infected person infects on average is referred by the reproduction number or R. In other words, this tells how ‘efficiently’ a virus is spreading. A minor R shows that the disease is on a decline while on the other hand, if R is greater than 1, that technically means that the number of infected people is increasing in each round, this is what is called the epidemic stage.
After the devastating second wave that saw hospitals and health infrastructure being overwhelmed by the patients infected by SARS-CoV2 coronavirus, the R-value started to decrease.
Thousands of people died due to the infection while lakhs were infected during the month of March-May period.
The Ministry Of Health data recorded on Thursday morning showed, with the administration of 56,36,336 vaccine doses in the last 24 hours, India’s COVID-19 vaccination coverage has surpassed the figure of 56.64 Cr (56,64,88,433) yesterday. The feat has been achieved through 63,13,210 sessions.
The recovery of 39,157 patients in the last 24 hours has increased the cumulative tally of recovered patients (since the beginning of the pandemic) to 3,15,25,080.
Consequently, India’s recovery rate stands at 97.53%, the highest since March 2020.
