New Delhi: India’s effective reproduction number (R) for Covid-19, which indicates how fast an infection is spreading, has increased slightly to 0.93 this week, after hovering around 0.92 for the past several weeks.
While the overall R value for India has remained steady, a closer look at the patterns in states and cities with a high number of active cases depicted a worrying scenario.
Sitabhra Sinha, a researcher at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, who has been tracking R value since the beginning of the pandemic, told ThePrint, “While looking at the nation as a whole there is little change in R — which has been hovering around 0.92 or 0.93 since November — things are looking slightly bad when you look at individual states.”
“This week, we find that three states among the top 16, with the highest number of active cases, have R over 1,” he added.
R needs to be kept below 1 for a sustained period of time for an epidemic to come to an end. As long as R is above one, active cases will keep increasing.
Maharashtra, which has the second highest number of active cases, saw an increase in R to 1.09 this week from last week’s 0.99. Similarly, Punjab, which had R below 1 last week, saw it increase to 1.04 this week. Madhya Pradesh had R value at 0.91 last week, which increased to 1.02 this week.
“Even states which have R less than 1, this value is inching up closer towards 1 — which means that the rate at which active cases were dropping is slowing down,” Sinha added.
For example, R value for Karnataka increased from 0.89 last week to 0.97 this week. Gujarat, too, saw a significant increase from 0.76 last week to 0.95 this week. Delhi’s R has increased from 0.87 to 0.97.
West Bengal, Assam and Telangana also saw small increase in their R values. While West Bengal’s R increased from 0.88 to 0.89 this week, Assam’s went from 0.95 last week to 0.96 this week. Telangana’s R was 0.81 last week, which has increased to 0.83 this week.
Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand have same R values as last week at 0.92, 0.85, 0.85 and 0.88 respectively.
Rajasthan is the only state among the top 15 states, with the highest active cases, where R value has reduced. Last week, the state’s R was 0.83, which dropped to 0.81 this week.
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Major cities
Sinha also said that it was “alarming” to see four out of the five major cities (not including Delhi) have R above 1.
Bengaluru, which had R below 1 last week, saw it increase to 1.03 this week. Mumbai’s R was 0.89 last week, which increased to 1.11 this week. Chennai’s R value was 0.98 last week which increased to 1.02 this week.
Pune already had R above 1 last week, and it has further increased to 1.38 this week. Kolkata has managed to keep its R at the same value as last week, at 0.96.
“It is early yet to start pushing the panic button, but if the trend continues or gets worse in the next couple of weeks, some serious thinking will need to be done about how to contain the spread,” Sinha warned.
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