India beginning to see increase in speed of spread of Covid-19 infections

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India beginning to see increase in speed of spread of Covid-19 infections. (Photo courtesy: Hindustan Times)

(TibetanReview.net, Jul11’21) – Even as the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic abates in India, the reproductive number, or R, an indicator of how fast the virus is spreading, has increased for the first time since the middle of April. This could be an early signal of an impending potential surge in number of cases, reported the indianexpress.com Jul 11.

The R-number, a mathematically calculated estimate which measures the number of people who are being infected by an already infected person, was declining until the last week of June.

But in the subsequent period, between Jun 20 and Jul 7, it has moved up significantly, the report said, citing the latest analysis by a team of researchers, led by Sitabhra Sinha at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai.

The team has estimated that during this period, the R-value for the country as a whole was 0.88, up from 0.78 for the period between May 15 and Jun 26. This means that every group of 100 infected people is, on an average, now passing on the infection to another set of 88 people, instead of a group of 78 earlier.

The only consolation at this time is stated to be that the R-value is still below 1. But this could change very quickly. An R-value above 1 means more than one person is being infected, on an average, by an already-infected person, and that leads to a surge in cases. 

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Meanwhile the latest data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare show that the number of daily new cases in the country had declined by 1,260 to 41,506, while the daily new deaths had declined by 311 to 895 in the past 24 hours recorded on Jul 11 at 8 AM, taking their cumulative totals to 30,837,222 cases and 408,040 deaths respectively.

The country reported its highest ever daily new cases of 4,14,188 on May 7.

Total recoveries have continued to improve to reach nearly 30 million (29,975,064 or 97.2%) while active cases have seen a decline by 915 to reach over .45 million (454,118 or 1.47%).

The fatality rate was 1.32%.

The daily positivity rate had risen to 2.25% while the weekly positivity rate was slightly down at 2.32%.

Eight states / Union Territories, namely Maharashtra (+1,776), Kerala (+2,111), Manipur (+298), Tripura (+77), Arunachal Pradesh (+184), Mizoram (+177), Sikkim (+67), and Dadra And Nagar Haveli And Daman And Diu (+2), have reported increases in active cases.

Two states, namely Maharashtra and Kerala, continue to have more than 115,000 active cases, with the rest having less than 38,000 active cases.

India is currently the country with the world’s second highest total number of Covid-19 cases after the USA, and the third highest total number of deaths after the USA and Brazil.

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The cumulative total of Covid-19 cases among Tibetans in India and Nepal have remained unchanged for the second day at 5,238, according to the tally of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) on its Tibet.net website Jul 11. Of them 4,822 had recovered while 284 were active. Those who have died total 132.

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Across the world the number of Covid-19 cases totaled over 186 million (186,474,156) and the deaths over 4 million (4,025,135), according to the tally of Johns Hopkins University as of Jul 11, 2021 at 3:51 PM.

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