New Delhi: The effective reproduction number or R for Covid — an indicator for how fast the infection is spreading — remained steady in India this week at 0.94, although several states like Karnataka saw values jump over 1.
R indicates the average number of people who are likely to catch the infection from one sick person. R should remain below 1 for the pandemic to come to an end.
Telangana, Odisha, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka and Mizoram all have R values above 1 now, according to Sitabhra Sinha, a researcher at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai.
For Mizoram, the value has remained over 1 for three weeks, although it fell from 1.14 around 16 November to about 1.11 in the last two weeks. Karnataka, which saw a recent spurt of Covid clusters, saw its R rise from 0.94 last week to 1.09 this week.
Jammu and Kashmir, where R was as high as 1.17 last week, the value has come down to 1.08. Odisha too has R at 1.08, up from 0.8 last week.
Telangana also saw a similar rise, from 0.96 last week to 1.04 this week.
Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu also saw a rise in their R values. While Himachal’s R value increased from 0.76 to 0.94, Tamil Nadu’s moved up from 0.93 to 0.97 this week. For Maharashtra, R was at 0.86 last week, which soared to 0.93 this week.
West Bengal, which had R at 1 last week, saw the value fall to 0.98 this week. The R value in Kerala dropped from 0.92 to 0.88.
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Major cities
Both Mumbai and Pune have had R values over 1 since around 11 November.
Pune’s R has been 1.13 for the last two weeks, having jumped from 1.09 around 16 November. Mumbai’s R rose further from 1.02 to 1.09 this week.
Chennai and Kolkata, both of which had R over 1 last week, saw the value fall to 0.96 and 0.95, respectively.
Bengaluru’s R dropped from 0.94 to 0.88 while Delhi’s number also fell a bit from 0.90 to 0.89 this week.
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