New Delhi: With 5,09,673 active Covid-19 cases, India has recorded a total of 85,53,657 cases so far. According to data by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 1,26,611 people have died and 79,17,373 have recovered till date.
In ThePrint’s daily States Tracker, we take a look at the data on testing and the rate at which the infection is spreading throughout India.
For this analysis, we use three parameters:
Rt value, known as reproduction number, is indicative of the number of new cases that are expected to emerge from a single case. An R value of less than 1 suggests that the rate of infection is slow since an infected patient will only infect less than one person.
Positivity rate is the percentage of people who are found to be infected by the virus from those who are being tested. This parameter indicates how widespread the disease is.
Daily tests per million give insight into the amount of testing being conducted in relation to the population of the area.
All data is sourced from covidtoday. in
Rt value
India’s average Rt value increased to 1.01 Sunday from 0.93 last week.
Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu recorded the lowest Rt value at 0.82. This was followed by Puducherry at 0.86, Karnataka at 0.88, Goa at 0.90, and Assam at 0.92.
Last week, 24 states and 4 UTs had recorded an Rt value of less than 1. This week, only 15 states and 3 UTs recorded an Rt value of less than 1.
Sikkim recorded the highest Rt value in India at 1.58. This was followed by Himachal Pradesh at 1.36, Chandigarh at 1.27, Ladakh at 1.25, and Uttarakhand at 1.21.
Kerala recorded an increase in Rt value to 1.02 this week from 0.97 last week. Similarly, Gujarat recorded an increase to 1.01 this week from 0.93 last week.
Positivity rate
India recorded an average positivity rate of 4.13 per cent Sunday.
Bihar recorded the lowest positivity rate at 0.53 per cent. This was followed by Jharkhand at 1.01 per cent, Andaman and Nicobar Islands at 1.13 per cent, Uttar Pradesh at 1.28 per cent, and Assam at 1.29 per cent.
Sikkim recorded the highest positivity rate in India at 18.25 per cent. This was followed by Goa at 12.33 per cent, Delhi at 11.97 per cent, and Kerala at 11.76 per cent.
Daily tests per million
India’s average daily tests per million stood at 871 as of Sunday.
Rajasthan recorded lowest daily tests per million at 255. This was followed by Nagaland at 279, Madhya Pradesh at 313, and Meghalaya at 400.
Ladakh recorded the highest daily tests per million at 6,383. This was followed by Andaman and Nicobar Islands at 3,776, Delhi at 3,069, Puducherry at 2,816, and Kerala at 1,794.
The approach of the Kerala government seems to be in shambles. It needs to test more than 1 lakh people per day consistently for atleast 15days to isolate the infected. It was surprising and shocking to learn a few days back that the govt. has stopped focusing on new infections and only focusing on reducing deaths. The fact of the matter is deaths would occurs only after a few days of having detected a positive case and the high proportion of aged people in Kerala is a warning sign. It is only a matter of time that the number of dead starts rising which is actually evident from recent figures too. Just because high number of cases are coming in, the govt should not shrug its responsibility by focusing only on reducing deaths. The foundation of that lies in isolating positive patients else this whole strategy is akin to building castles in the air without a foundation of testing and tracking and isolating.