Amid reports of India's increase in 'R-Value', All India Institute Of Medical Sciences chief, Dr Randeep Guleria said that it's a cause of concern. The AIIMS chief streed on the need of aggressive containment strategies in the parts of the country that are witnessing a surge in fresh Covid infections.
The R-Factor is an indicator of the effective reproductive number of a virus.
According to a NDTV report, Dr Guleria explained, "Starting from .96, and going all the way up to 1, the rise in R-Value is a cause of concern. Simply put, this means that the chances of infection spreading from a person, who has Covid, to others have gone up. The areas which are witnessing this surge should bring in restrictions and employ "test, track, and treat" strategy to break the chain of transmission."
To be noted, India on Friday recorded highest number of cases in last three weeks with 44,230 fresh infections. The fresh spike in cases has been worrying in Kerala and some northeastern states. Forty-six districts in the country have a positivity rate of more than 10 per cent, the government said on Saturday.
Dr Guleria commenting on the spike in covid cases in Kerala said, "there's a need to evaluate the surge in infections." "In the beginning, Kerala had set a precedent for others by managing the pandemic well. They also had an aggressive vaccination drive. Yet despite that, are witnessing a spike in a way that's different from other parts of the country. This needs to be evaluated. Also, is there a variant behind the surge? Are containment strategies being aggressively followed - all this needs to be evaluated," the AIIMS chief explained.
Not just Kerala, but its neighbouring states - Tamil Nadu and Karmataka too need to adopt aggressive testing strategy to break the chain of transmission.
India has logged over 3.16 crore cases so far, and 4.23 lakh people have died due to Covid.
