India’s R-value, an indication of the rate of spread of COVID-19, has come down further to 1.57 in the week from January 14-21, with the country-wide peak of the ongoing wave expected to come in the next fortnight, suggests a preliminary analysis by IIT Madras.

According to the analysis, the R-value stood at 1.57 between January 14 and January 21, while it was 2.2 in the week of January 7-13, and stood at 4 from January 1-6 and 2.9 between December 25 and 31. The preliminary analysis has been done by computational modeling 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.

The R-value of Mumbai stood at 0.67, Delhi at 0.98, Chennai at 1.2 and Kolkata at 0.56. Dr Jayant Jha, Assistant Professor at the Department of Mathematics, IIT Madras, said that the R-value of Mumbai and Kolkata indicates that the peak is over there and it is becoming endemic; however, in Delhi and Chennai, the R-value is still close to 1.Jha added that according to the analysis, the peak is likely to come in the next 14 days, till February 6… (The Hindu – PTI, January 23, 2022)