MUMBAI: In one of the gladdest tidings for Mumbai — once the
Covid hotspot in the country — the doubling rate of the virus in the city has, for the first time, crossed 100 days, report Vijay V Singh and Malathy Iyer.
Doubling time refers to the period in which cases of Covid-19 will increase to twice the original number. On October 20, Mumbai’s doubling rate slowed to 102 days, nearly twofold from what it was in mid-September, and daily growth rate fell to 0.69%.
BMC’s additional municipal commissioner Suresh Kakani said, “The doubling rate is slowing and daily growth rate of the virus is coming down. These are good signs.’’ Incidentally,
Maharashtra state too had briefly reached the doubling rate of 100 days on October 15.
Epidemiologist Dr Giridhar Babu said the reproductive rate of the virus has consistently been less than 1 for a few weeks in Mumbai. Reproduction number or R0, pronounced ‘R naught’, indicates how contagious the infectious disease is. If R0 is less than one, it means an average of less than one person will be infected by a person with the disease; as the R0 keeps dropping, the pandemic will flatten out, dip and eventually die out.