Covid-19: India's active cases to breach 15 lakh by October 8, Chhattisgarh emerges as new worry

India is likely to harbor 15 lakh Covid-19 patients by the first week of October with Chhattisgarh emerging as the fresh worrying spot, scientists tracking the epidemic have warned.

The central Indian state with a big chunk of the country's forest and the tribal population is consistently reporting a high ‘reproduction number’ (R) for more than a month.

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The reproduction number is the number of individuals one Covid-19 positive person can spread the infection. For more than a month, Chhattisgarh reports an R-value of 1.35, which is the highest in the country. This means 10 infected persons can pass the Covid-19 virus to 13 persons spreading the infections.

This is the result from the latest run of a mathematical model being run by the Chennai-based Institute of Mathematical Sciences professor Sitabhra Sinha, who is successfully tracking the epidemic since the numbers started rising in March.

“The R-value is less than one in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana while it is very close to one in Karnataka, Assam, and West Bengal. On the other hand, Chhattisgarh is a whopping 1.35. The rapid increase in active cases in Chhattisgarh, which has an extremely high R consistently for more than a month is the most worrying case,” Sinha told DH.

According to the Union Health Ministry, Chhattisgarh comes at the fifth spot after the big four – Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu – inactive cases as well as recoveries. It overtakes more populous states like Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Delhi, and West Bengal.

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“If R remains unchanged we are most likely to see India breach 1.5 million active cases by October 7-8,” Sinha said.

On Friday, 96,424 fresh cases were reported taking the Covid-19 tally to 52.14 lakh while the death toll crossed the 84,000-mark with an addition of 1174 deaths in the last 24 hours. The total number of active cases stands at 10.17 lakh.

“The R-value for Delhi (1.26) and HR (1.21) is also looking bad as they are consistently high for the last few weeks,” Sinha said on the latest run of his model, which uses data up to September 15.

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Delhi, which had witnessed a drop in the Covid-19 cases and reported only 600 plus new cases in July third week, saw a rise again in September with daily reporting of more than 4,000 new cases.