what is the R naught of covid -19
Answers
Explanation:
The virus that causes COVID-19 is mainly transmitted through droplets generated when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or speaks. These droplets are too heavy to hang in the air. They quickly fall on floors or surfaces. You can be infected by breathing in the virus if you are within 1 metre of a person who has COVID-19, or by touching a contaminated surface and then touching your eyes, nose or mouth before washing your hands.
Answer:
Bengaluru/New Delhi: There is a glimmer of hope in India’s battle against Covid-19 from a key metric of the rate of infection of coronavirus.
The metric, called the R-Naught or R-Zero – and written as R0 – estimates that the infection rate in India has fallen to 1.55 on 11 April from 1.83 on 6 April, indicating that the restrictions imposed under the three-week lockdown could be helping.
The metric has been estimated by scientists at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMS) in Chennai. The metric of 1.55 means every Covid-19 patient could infect 1.55 people if placed in a crowd of uninfected individuals.As on 13 April, India has 8,048 people infected by coronavirus while 324 patients died of it. At its highest, India’s R0 was estimated at 4 on 23 March, according to a study by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
The R0 is a metric calculated through modelling, and is meant to examine how a certain disease will progress while guiding authorities on how to deal with it. An R0 of less than 1 means a disease will not grow to epidemic proportions, as was the case with the 2012 MERS outbreak that originated in Saudi Arabia.
However, if people are vaccinated or have immunity through prior infection, even a high R0 won’t translate into high fatalities, as is the case with measles, which has an estimated R0 of 12-18.
Experts at IMS had predicted that Covid-19 would spawn at least 35,000 cases by 20 April if social distancing was not enforced, but the government’s efforts seem to have helped control its progression.
“Without the lockdown, India was looking at lakhs of cases – we have data to believe that it would’ve been an uncontrollable scenario,” a top government source told ThePrint.Although the Tablighi Jamaat event derailed the containment to some extent, the country continues to have benefitted greatly from the lockdown, the source said. “The growth rate has shown an encouraging decline since the lockdown … But since the number of cases are rising, the lockdown needs to be extended.”
Shamika Ravi, a former member of the PM’s Economic Advisory Council and scholar at the Brookings Institute, seemed to echo that when she tweeted Monday that India’s Covid-19 cases could have surpassed 53,000 by now without the restrictions.
An accompanying graphic that cites data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Centre notes a slowing growth rate in India as of 6 April, with cases doubling every six days instead of four.
Although the Tablighi Jamaat event derailed the containment to some extent, the country continues to have benefitted greatly from the lockdown, the source said. “The growth rate has shown an encouraging decline since the lockdown … But since the number of cases are rising, the lockdown needs to be extended.”
Shamika Ravi, a former member of the PM’s Economic Advisory Council and scholar at the Brookings Institute, seemed to echo that when she tweeted Monday that India’s Covid-19 cases could have surpassed 53,000 by now without the restrictions.
An accompanying graphic that cites data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Centre notes a slowing growth rate in India as of 6 April, with cases doubling every six days instead of four.