New Delhi: India’s R value for Covid — an indicator of how fast the infection is spreading — has decreased further to 0.83 this week from 0.89 last week.
The state of Kerala, which currently has the highest share of active cases, has also seen a dip in its R to 0.87 this week from 0.93 last week.
R or effective reproduction number is a measure of the average number of people who are likely to catch the infection from one sick person.
R should be sustained below 1 for the epidemic to come to an end.
“The slight improvement in the R value for India is very likely because of the better situation in Kerala, which has further reduced its R, after going below 1 last week,” said Sitabhra Sinha, a researcher at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai.
“None of the top states currently have R more than 1,” he said.
R value for states
Among the states with the highest number of active cases, West Bengal has the highest R value of 0.96, which has remained the same throughout the month of August.
The R for Assam, meanwhile, has increased to 0.95 this week from last week’s 0.84. Telangana, where R was 0.85 last week is another state that has seen it rise to 0.91 this week.
Similarly, Meghalaya saw R increase to 0.84 this week from 0.79 last week.
Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu, the only state which had R at 1 last week, saw a decline in R to 0.94 this week.
All other states with high active cases saw a decline in their R values.
Major cities
However, Sinha warns that “things are not so rosy” for the major metro cities.
Kolkata still has R over 1, although the value has decreased slightly to 1.05 this week from last week’s 1.08.
At the same time, Mumbai seems to have breached the threshold of 1. Although Sinha said that he could now get an accurate estimate for the city.
The value for Mumbai was 0.7 on 18 August, which increased to 0.95 on 20 August, Sinha added.
The R value for Chennai is fluctuating around 1, he said.