The COVID-19 R-value in the country, an indicator of how rapidly COVID-19 is spreading, stood at 2.2 between January 7 and 13, as recorded by the researchers at IIT Madras. This likely suggests that the current wave of the pandemic is ebbing.

A preliminary analysis by the institute stated that there has been a decline in the R-value over the previous two weeks. The R-value was around 2.9 from December 25 to December 31, and stood at 4 from January 1 to 6.

The R-value of Mumbai was reported at 1.3, for Delhi it was 2.5, for Chennai 2.4 and for Kolkata 1.6, according to the analysis by IIT Madras Department of Mathematics and Centre of Excellence for Computational Mathematics and Data Science, led by Prof Neelesh S Upadhye and Prof S Sundar… (Times Now, Economic Times – PTI, January 17, 2022)