India's R-naught value recorded at 4
GS Paper - 2 (Diseases)
India's R-naught value which indicates the spread of Covid-19 was recorded at 4 this week, suggesting a very high infection transmission rate, according to a preliminary analysis by IIT Madras predicting the peak of the third wave from 1 February to 15 February 2022.
What
- R-naught or R0 indicates the number of people an infected person can spread the disease to. A pandemic is considered to end if this value goes below 1.
- Based on preliminary analysis by computational modeling done by IIT Madras, , the R0 value was close to 2.9 nationally in the past week (December 25 to December 31).
- R0 depends on three things - transmissibility probability, contact rate and the expected time interval in which infection can happen.
- Now, with the increase in quarantine measures or restrictions, maybe the contact rate will go down and then in that case R0 can decrease.
