Third wave to reach peak between February 1 and 15: IIT Madras analysis

Indias Rnaught value which indicates the spread of Covid19 was recorded at 4 this week suggesting a very high infection transmission rate according to a preliminary analysis by IIT Madras predicting the peak of the third wave between February 115Rnaught or R0 indicates the number of people an infected person can spread the disease to A pandemic is considered to end if this value goes below 1Based on preliminary analysis by computational modeling done by IIT Madras which was shared with news agency PTI the R0 value was close to 29 nationally in the past week December 25 to December 31 The number was recorded at 4 this week January 16Explaining further Dr Jayant Jha Assistant Professor Department of Mathematics IIT Madras said R0 depends on three things transmissibility probability contact rate and the expected time interval in which infection can happenNow with the increase in quarantine measures or restrictions maybe the contact rate will go down and then in that case R0 can decrease So based on our preliminary analysis which is just based on the last two weeks we can tell these numbers but again these numbers can change based on how much affirmative action is taken with respect to social gathering and all he saidThe Union Health Ministry on Wednesday said India is seeing an exponential rise in the number of coronavirus cases which is believed to be driven by the Omicron variant It also highlighted that the countrys R naught value is 269 higher than the 169 recorded during the peak of the pandemics second waveJha said the ministrys estimates are based on a different time interval than IIT Madras which has done the preliminary analysis from the past two weeksHe further said that as per their estimate the peak in the current wave is expected to come between February 115 and it is expected to be sharper than earlier peaksWhat we expect from the exploratory data analysis is that the peak will happen somewhere between February 115 and our analysis also shows that as compared to previous waves there will be a sharper increase to the peak Jha saidHe said this wave will be different from the previous waves because of vaccination and factors like less social distancing seen this timeResponding to how it is estimated that there is less social distancing in this wave he said during the first wave many restrictions were imposed but right now despite having a high number of cases there are not many restrictions imposed yetBut the advantage here is that almost 50 per cent of the population this time has got vaccinated Jha addedThe preliminary analysis has been done jointly 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 SundarIndia saw a singleday rise of 141986 new coronavirus cases raising the tally to 35368372 which included 3071 cases of Omicron variant reported across 27 states and union territories so far the Union Health Ministry said on SaturdayThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever