NEW DELHI: Every Covid-positive person is infecting two others in the national capital as the city’s R-value, indicating the spread of coronavirus, was recorded at 2.1 this week, according to a study by IIT-Madras. The Department of Mathematics and Centre of Excellence for Computational Mathematics and Data Science did the preliminary analysis by computational modeling. The department, headed by Prof Neelesh S Upadhye and Prof S Sundar, found that Delhi’s R-value this week was recorded at 2.1 against the country’s R-value of 1.3.
Asked if the rise in cases in Delhi could be the beginning of the fourth wave, Dr Jayant Jha, Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at 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 a news agency.
As for other metro cities, the number of cases is too low to ascertain a trend.Delhi is witnessing a steady rise in the number of Covid-19 cases. The city recorded 1,042 fresh Covid cases with a positivity rate of 4.64 per cent on Friday. The Omicron sub-lineage BA.2.12 has been detected in a majority of the samples sequenced from Delhi in the first fortnight of April and it could be behind the spurt in the numbers.
“New sub-variants BA.2.12 (52 per cent samples) and BA.2.10 (11 per cent samples) are showing high transmission and have been found in over 60 per cent of the total samples from Delhi sequenced recently,” an official source said.The Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) has claimed that the Omicron variant derivative BA.2.12.1 has been found in a few samples in Delhi. Officials, however, have not confirmed this. The BA.2.12.1 variant is said to be contributing to the recent rise in cases in the US.
The number of fresh Covid-19 cases are inching towards the 1,100-mark with 1,094 persons testing positive. The city recorded two deaths due to the disease. Country-wide, 2,527 new cases and 33 fatalities were reported.PM Narendra Modi will hold a video conference on Wednesday with chief ministers on the emerging situation.