As India's effective reproduction number (R) for Covid, an indicator of how quickly the infection is spreading, increased to over one for the first time since January ringing alarm bells amid a jump in Covid cases by 66 per cent to touch 2,067 infections, States are gearing up to take preventive measures.
While Uttar Pradesh and Haryana have already made masks mandatory in a few districts, the national capital, Delhi too followed suit on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Odisha which continue to make mask mandatory has ordered for precautionary surveillance measures in the State
India's effective reproduction number (R) for Covid, an indicator of how quickly the infection is spreading, has increased to over one for the first time since January, estimates Sitabhra Sinha, a researcher from Chennai's Institute of Mathematical Sciences.
The country's R-value, steadily increasing over the last few weeks, is 1.07 for the week between April 12-18,. In the preceding April 5-11 week, it was 0.93. The last time the R-value was above 1 was in the week between January 16-22, when the value was 1.28, Sinha said.
"This increase in R-value is not just because of Delhi but also Haryana and Uttar Pradesh," the mathematician, who has been tracking the R number for India since the beginning of the pandemic,” the researchers told a news agency.
An R number lower than 1 indicates that the disease will stop spreading as there aren't enough people being infected to sustain the outbreak.
“The total cases in India are indeed increasing exponentially. Of course, this being a very large country, this national rise is primarily being driven by a few regions - one cluster in the north (Delhi, Haryana, UP) and the other in the south (Karnataka),” Sinha said.
"It is interesting that the major cities of Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru also have R above 1, suggesting that urban areas may be showing an increasing number of cases even though at the level of the entire state such an increase may not yet be apparent,” he noted.
Among the major states, Kerala and Maharashtra have an R-value less than 1, with values of 0.72 and 0.88 respectively WHILE karnataka also has R over 1 currently, possibly because of the rising cases in Bengaluru, Sinha explained.
With 2,067 new coronavirus infections being reported in a day, India's total tally of Covid-19 cases rose to 4,30,47,594 (4.3 crore) while active cases increased to 12,340, according to the Union Health Ministry The daily positivity rate was recorded at 0.49 per cent and the weekly positivity rate was recorded at 0.38 per cent, according to the Ministry.