(TibetanReview.net, Aug04’21) – The government of India has on Aug 3 expressed concern that the reproduction number, or R-value, for the Covid-19 infection, a key metric measuring how fast the pandemic is spreading, has risen beyond 1 in eight states and Union Territories as it indicated the possibility of a further rise in cases in the coming days.
R-value estimates the number of people that an infected person is transmitting the disease to, on an average. A value of 1 means every infected person, on an average, is transmitting the disease to one more person. A value greater than 1, therefore, means the pandemic is in an ascendant phase, and that cases will rise.
The rising R-value, coupled with the dominant presence of the highly infectious Delta variant, meant that the pandemic was still “raging” in India, and was far from over, the indianexpress.com Aug 4 cited Dr V K Paul, head of the government’s Covid-19 task force, as saying.
The report said that on the same day India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said there were eight states and UTs where the R-value had risen above 1: Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir (1.4); Lakshadweep (1.3); Tamil Nadu, Mizoram, Karnataka (1.2); Kerala and Puducherry (1.1).
Meanwhile after reporting a rather sharp decline in daily new cases yesterday morning, India reported an ever sharper rise of nearly 40% in new cases this morning, pointed out the dnaindia.com Aug 4.
***
The latest data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare show that the number of daily new cases had rose by 12,076, or nearly 40%, to 42,625 while the daily new deaths had increased by 140 to 562 in the past 24 hours recorded on Aug 4 at 8 AM, taking their cumulative totals to 31,769,132 cases and 425,757 deaths respectively.
The country reported its highest ever daily new cases of 4,14,188 on May 7.
Total recoveries have reached over 30.9 million (30,933,022 or 97.37%) while active cases have increased again by 5,395 to over .41 million (410,353 or 1.29%).
The fatality rate was 1.34%.
The daily positivity rate was up at 2.31% and the weekly positivity at 2.36%.
Fourteen states / Union Territories (six more than yesterday), namely Kerala (+7,903), Karnataka (+260), Uttar Pradesh (+26), Madhya Pradesh (+7), Haryana (+5), Assam (+11), Uttarakhand (+7), Jammu And Kashmir (+39), Himachal Pradesh (+110), Chandigarh (+1), Mizoram (+347), Sikkim (+78), Ladakh (+14), and Lakshadweep (+11) have reported increases in active cases.
Nine states continue to have more than 10,000 active cases.
India is currently the country with the world’s second highest number of Covid-19 cases after the USA, and the third highest total number of deaths after the USA and Brazil. It is still among countries reporting the highest number of daily new cases.
***
The cumulative total of Covid-19 cases among Tibetans in India and Nepal has remained unchanged at 5,800, according to the tally of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) on its Tibet.net website Aug 4. Of them 5,053 had recovered while 609 were active. The total fatality was 138.
***
Across the world the number of Covid-19 cases totaled over 199.6 million (199,628,827) and the deaths over 4.24 million (4,247,333), according to the tally of Johns Hopkins University as of Aug 4, 2021 at 2:50 PM.