Covid-19: Eight states are showing a rise in R-number, says Centre

The R-number of coronavirus infections in India has inched up in eight states, Health Secretary Lav Agarwal said at a press conference on Tuesday. He added that the R-number, an indicator of transmission of the infection, is 1.2 on an average in India, United States, Canada and Australia, ANI reported.

“Whenever R number is above one, it means that the case trajectory is increasing and it needs to be controlled,” Agarwal said.

The R-value measures how many people are being infected by one Covid-positive person on an average. For instance, a value between 0.7 and 0.9 means that every 10 Covid-positive people will pass on the infection to seven to nine others. The number of infections keeps rising if the R value is more than 1.

An R lower than 1 means that one patient is not even infecting one more person, on average, and if the number keeps falling, there will be fewer and fewer cases going forward. If every Covid-19 patient is infecting one more person, the spread remains slow, yet many people contract the disease. If R is more than 1, the infection can spiral out of control.

The states where the R-number is more than one are Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Lakshadweep, Tamil Nadu,…

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