India’s Covid reproduction rate has crossed 1, a cause of concern, says Centre

The reproduction rate, or R value, of Covid-19 in India has crossed the 1.0 mark, the Union government said on Tuesday. The increasing trend of the reproduction, commonly known as “R value or number” in some states was a cause of concern, the government added, according to PTI.

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. If the value declines, the infection will eventually stop spreading because there will not be enough new cases for the outbreak to continue.

Five states – Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh – have reported that the R value has gone beyond the 1.0-mark, the Union government said at a joint press briefing on the pandemic, reported PTI.

All India Institute of Medical Sciences chief Randeep Guleria had on July 31 said that the R value had been rising. “Simply put, this means that the chances of infection spreading from a person, who has Covid, to others have gone up,” he added.

Meanwhile, as many as…

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