India’s Covid R value dips to 0.86 — lowest-ever since pandemic began

This week, all states with high active Covid caseloads also registered an R value below 1. Mumbai and Pune are the two cities with an R above 1.

A health worker collects swab sample of a passenger for Covid-19 test at the KSRTC bus stand in Bengaluru | PTI File photo

New Delhi: India’s effective reproduction number (R) for Covid-19, which is an indicator of how fast an infection spreads, dropped to 0.86 this week — the lowest it has been since the pandemic hit the country.

Before this, the lowest R had fallen to was 0.88 in the last week of October. However, by the end of November, the value had once again risen to above 1.

R value represents the number of people one patient can infect. R value below 1 means the number of active cases are declining.

“This is probably the best week after COVID started in India in terms of the R estimates for the country as a whole and the various states,” Sitabhra Sinha, a researcher at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai who has been tracking R value for India, told ThePrint.

States with high active cases have R below 1

The Indian states with the highest active caseloads have also recorded R values below 1.

“Not only is R for India down to 0.86 — which is marginally lower than the previous minimum of 0.88 that occurred during late October — none of the states having the highest number of active cases have R more than one,” Sinha said.

Maharashtra’s R went down from 0.88 last week to 0.71 this week. The week before that the value was 1.08.

Similarly, this week, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh have R values at 0.85 and 0.86 respectively, having reduced from 0.98 and 0.94 last week.

Karnataka’s R value had risen to 1.08 last week, but is now at 0.74. Chhattisgarh’s R value was just over 1 last week, and has now fallen to 0.87.

Delhi’s R value, too, dropped from 0.77 last week to 0,71. Rajasthan, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh’s R is also below 1, and the states are showing a decreasing trend.

R increases for Kerala, Madhya Pradesh

Kerala, however, has registered an increase in R in the last two weeks. Last week, the state saw an increase in the value from 0.91 to 0.94. This week there was a marginal increase to 0.95.

Madhya Pradesh also saw a rise in R from 0.91 to 0.94 this week. Telangana also saw its R value go up from 0.81 to 0.92 along with Haryana from 0.70 to 0.75.

Mumbai, Pune have R more than 1

“Among the cities only Mumbai and Pune have R more than one, but even for Mumbai the very recent data seems to suggest that R may have just gotten below one there,” Sinha said.

Mumbai’s R value was 0.87 last week, but has now increased to 1.16. Pune’s R value increased to 1.09 from 0.60.

Chennai’s R value also rose to 0.95 from 0.88.

Kolkata and Bengaluru, however, saw a declining trend. Kolkata’s R was 0.91 last week, which has reduced to 0.81 this week. Bengaluru’s R went down to 0.66 from last week’s 1.07.