New Delhi: The increase in India’s effective reproduction number (R) — an indicator of how fast the infection is spreading — continued this week, with the value rising to 1.19 from 1.08 last week. This is the highest India’s R has been since July last year.
R needs to be below 1 for the epidemic to come to an end and India had managed to keep R below 1 for several weeks — between 20 November and 19 February — but it crossed the threshold in the last week of February.
“The overall situation has worsened with the R for the country as a whole climbing to 1.19,” said Sitabhra Sinha, a professor at Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, who has been tracking the R figures since the beginning of the pandemic.
The top 16 states with the highest number of active Covid-19 cases, with the exception of Kerala, have R over 1.
Chhattisgarh has the highest R value among them at 1.44 this week, an increase from 1.30 last week.
Punjab also continues to have a high R value at 1.32, although the value has decreased slightly from 1.34 last week. Haryana also showed a reducing trend in R, decreasing from 1.37 to 1.31.
Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu see rise in R
Meanwhile, Maharashtra, which currently has the highest number of active cases in the country, saw its R spike to 1.29 this week from 1.15 last week.
Similarly Karnataka, which had R at 1.15 last week saw an increase to 1.30.
Tamil Nadu’s R value increased to 1.23 this week from 1.11. Madhya Pradesh also saw a rise to 1.25, last week the state’s R was 1.18.
Gujarat’s R is almost the same as last week at 1.24. West Bengal had R below 1 last week, but this week it increased to 1.02.
All major cities have R over 1.
Among the cities, Pune has the highest R at 1.36. Chennai’s R value is currently at 1.20, while Bengaluru’s infection rate is 1.17.
Delhi’s R increased to 1.23 this week while last week it was close to 1. Mumbai, which had R at 1.17 last week, saw it rise to 1.28.
Kolkata’s R increased from 1.02 to 1.05 this week.
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