India’s R value rises to 1.08 from last week, Haryana records highest at 1.37

The R value or reproduction number is an important metric that tells us how fast the Covid-19 infection is spreading and how close we are to the pandemic ending.

A health worker collects swab samples of residents of Dharavi during a door-to-door screening for Covid-19 in Mumbai, on 11 March 2021 | Kunal Patil | PTI

New Delhi: India’s effective reproduction number (R) — an indicator of how fast the infection is spreading — has increased further to 1.08 from 1.06 last week.

R needs to remain below 1 for the pandemic to come to an end. Around 24 September last year, the country’s R value fell below 1 for the first time, dropping to 0.93. However, around 27 November, the R briefly rose to 1.06. Since then, the R value had been around 0.92 but crossed 1 two weeks ago.

Sitabhra Sinha, a researcher at the Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Chennai who has been tracking India’s R value, noted that 11 of the top 16 states with the highest number of active cases have R over 1.

Haryana currently has the highest R value — it rose to 1.37 this week from 1.29 last week. Punjab came next as it R rose to 1.34 from 1.32. The state currently has the third highest burden of active cases.

Maharashtra, the state with the highest burden of active cases, saw its R rise to 1.15 this week from 1.14 last week.

Other states with high R values are Chhattisgarh (1.30), Rajasthan (1.25) and Gujarat (1.23). All three reported an increase in their values compared to last week.

Delhi, which was at 1.26 last week, showed a drop this week. However, the R value cannot be accurately estimated due to fluctuations in the data, Sinha said, adding he estimated it to still be over 1.

Kerala, West Bengal and Telangana are also states with a high burden of active cases but whose R is below 1.

In Kerala, the R reduced to 0.77 this week from 0.89 last week, while in Telangana it reduced to 0.81 this week from 1.05 last week.

West Bengal has maintained the same R at 0.97 since last week.

Major cities

All the major metros now have an R over 1.

For Mumbai, the value rose once again to 1.17 this week from 1.16. Pune’s R, which was at 1.30 last week, dropped this week. Like Delhi, Sinha estimated the value is still over 1 here.

In Chennai, R rose to 1.05 from nearly 1 last week. Bengaluru too saw its R rise to 1.17 from 1.12. Kolkata however, reported a drop to 1.02 this week from 1.04.

(Edited by Manasa Mohan)