Covid-19, was recorded at 2.1 this week, implying that every infected person is infecting two others in the national capital, according to news agency PTI report. What does R-value indicate? The 'R' or reproductive value indicates the number of people an infected person can spread the disease to, and a pandemic is considered to end if this value goes below one.
The preliminary analysis by computational modelling was done 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 analysis found that Delhi's R-value this week was recorded at 2.1 and India's R-value, at present, stands at 1.3, according to PTI report.
When asked if it can be deduced that this is the beginning of the fourth wave of Covid-19 in Delhi, Dr Jayant Jha, Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics, IIT-Madras, said it would be too early to declare an onset of another wave. “We can only say right now that every person is affecting two others....but we need to wait a bit to declare onset...we don't know about the immunity status and whether the people who got affected during the third wave in January are getting affected or not again," he told PTI.