Covid Infectivity In India May Be Going Down

Despite a rapid and worrying surge in Covid-19 cases in several parts of the country, the reproductive factor — the rate at which every infected person transmits the disease to others — of the virus has gone down marginally over the last few days.

- Sumi Sukanya Dutta

While R0 for SARS CoV 2 was 1.22 in the country before June 7, it came down to 1.15 in the week of June 7-14, an analysis of the disease progression by biophysicists attached with the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai has shown.

This decline assumes significance especially as many additional places like hotels, religious places, shopping malls and restaurants were allowed to open June 8 onwards across India.

The R0 refers to how many other people will catch the disease from a single infected person, in a population that hasn’t been exposed to the disease before.