Delhi's COVID R-Value Crosses 2; Every New Patient Is Infecting 2 Others: What This Study Says

As the number of COVID-19 cases in Delhi continues to climb, the R-value, which indicates the spread of the infection has also gone up,

According to an analysis by IIT-Madras, the R-value of COVID-19 in Delhi was recorded at 2.1 this week, implying that every infected person is infecting two others in the national capital.

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What does rising R-value mean?

The 'R' or reproductive value indicates the number of people an infected person can spread the disease to, and a pandemic is considered to end if this value goes below one.

The preliminary analysis by computational modelling was done by IIT-Madras' Department of Mathematics and Centre of Excellence for Computational Mathematics and Data Science headed by Prof Neelesh S Upadhye and Prof S Sundar.

Delhi's R-value this week was recorded at 2.1.

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According to Dr. Jayant Jha, Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics, IIT-Madras it is still too early to declare the fourth wave of COVID-19 in Delhi.

¡°We can only say right now that every person is affecting two others....but we need to wait a bit to declare onset...we don't know about the immunity status and whether the people who got affected during the third wave in January are getting affected or not again,¡± he told PTI.

Delhi is witnessing an uptick in the number of COVID-19 cases. The city logged 1,042 fresh COVID cases with a positivity rate of 4.64 per cent on Friday.

Not just Delhi

It is not just Delhi that has seen an increase in R-value.

For the first time since January, the overall R-value in India had crossed 1, this week.

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The country's R-value, steadily increasing over the last few weeks, is 1.07 for the week between April 12-18, according to Sitabhra Sinha, a researcher from Chennai's Institute of Mathematical Sciences said. In the preceding April 5-11 week, it was 0.93.

Highest since January

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.

An R-value of over 1 indicates that the number of active cases has increased. R should be contained below 1 to control the pandemic. 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.

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¡°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.

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