New Delhi: India’s effective reproduction number or R for Covid — an indicator of how fast the infection is spreading — is steady at 0.90, the same as last week. However, several states including West Bengal, Assam and Himachal Pradesh are now showing an upward trend in infections.
R indicates the average number of people who are likely to catch the infection from a Covid positive individual. The value of R should remain below 1 for the pandemic to come to an end.
Among states with the highest burden of active cases, Himachal Pradesh now has the highest R at 1.20, much higher than last week’s 0.90, according to Sitabhra Sinha, a researcher at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai. Siha has been tracking R since the beginning of the pandemic.
Similarly, West Bengal also has R over 1. The R value for the state increased from 0.97 last week to 1.06 this week. The R value for Assam this week is 1.13, a sharp increase from last week’s 0.84.
Telangana is another state where R value is over 1 — 1.06 — this week. It was 0.92 last week.
R values for Maharashtra and Karnataka are 0.94 and 0.95, respectively, similar to the last week’s values.
Kerala is once again witnessing a rise in infection rate. The R in the state increased from 0.86 last week to 0.89 this week, reversing the decreasing trend over the last several weeks.
Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu and Odisha saw their R values decrease. While for Tamil Nadu, the value reduced from 0.94 to 0.92, Odisha’s R dropped from 0.90 to 0.88 this week.
Major cities
Among cities, Kolkata has the highest R of 1.14, followed by Delhi, which has R at 1.1.
R for Bengaluru and Chennai is 0.93 and 0.92, respectively. Meanwhile, Mumbai’s R is at 0.94, and Pune’s R is relatively low at 0.84.
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