When will third wave of Covid-19 peak in India? IIT study answers

New Delhi: India’s R-value, which indicates the rate of spread of coronavirus, has further reduced to 1.57 in the week from January 14-21, while the third wave of infections is expected to hit peak in the next fortnight, according to a preliminary analysis by IIT Madras. R-value 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.

As per the analysis shared by IIT Madras with news agency PTI, the R-value was recorded at 1.57 between January 14 and January 21. The number was recorded at 2.2 in the week of January 7-13 while it was 4 from January 1-6 and 2.9 from December 25- 31.

The preliminary analysis was done by computational modeling by IIT Madras’ Department of Mathematics and Centre of Excellence for Computational Mathematics and Data Science headed by Prof Neelesh S Upadhye and Prof S Sundar. According to the data, the R-value of Mumbai was 0.67, Delhi 0.98, Chennai 1.2 and Kolkata 0.56.