New Delhi: India’s third Covid wave seems to have subsided with the country’s effective reproduction number (R) — an indicator of how fast the infection is spreading — falling to 0.68 this week (estimates released Wednesday), the lowest since the beginning of the pandemic.
This is also the first time since December that the country’s R has fallen to below 1.
“The wave seems to have completely dissipated by now,” Sitabhra Sinha, a researcher at Institute of Mathematical Science, who has been tracking R values since the beginning of the pandemic told ThePrint.
Sinha noted that around 24 January, the R value for the country was at 1.3. By 28 January, this reduced to 0.90. This week, the value has further dropped to 0.68, the lowest since India’s first Covid wave.
Moreover, all states and Union territories with more than 5,000 active Covid cases now have R below 1.
R is an estimate of the average number of people who catch the infection from one Covid patient and should be sustained below 1 for the epidemic to end.
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States’ report
The highest reported R, according to the latest estimates, is in Mizoram, 0.88. Last week (around 28 January), the state’s R was 1.48. Madhya Pradesh has an R value of 0.78, the second highest in the country. Madhya Pradesh’s R last week was at 1.75.
Meanwhile, five states which had R value over 1 in the last estimates now have R of below 1. Kerala, which had R value of 1.27 last week, now has an R value of 0.76. Telangana’s R also fell from 1.3 to 0.69 this week. Similarly, for Tamil Nadu R fell from 1.31 last week to 0.58.
Jammu Kashmir and Karnataka, which both had R over 1.50 last week, have now reported a reduced R value of 0.54 and 0.49 respectively.
Delhi’s R was at 0.59 last week, which has decreased to 0.53 this week.
Major cities
All major cities now have R less than one. Last week, Pune and Bengaluru had R of 1.39 and 1.52 respectively, which has reduced to 0.61 and 0.4 respectively, this week.
Meanwhile, the R for Chennai is 0.46, a drop from last week’s 0.79.
Mumbai and Kolkata saw a rise in their R values, although it remained below 1 in both places. While Kolkata the R value rose from 0.4 to 0.7 in a week, in Mumbai it went up to 0.72 from last week’s 0.22.
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