The current wave of the COVID-19 infection in the country is expected to peak in the next 14 days, by February 6, as per a preliminary analysis by IIT Madras.

The study also concluded that India’s R-value, which indicates how rapidly COVID-19 is spreading, has further reduced to 1.57 in the week from January 14 to 21.

R-value indicates the number of people an infected person can transmit the virus to.

The R-value was recorded at 1.57 between January 14 and January 21 while the number was recorded at 2.2 in the week of January 7-13 and at 4 from January 1-6 and at 2.9 from December 25- 31 last year, PTI reported, citing the analysis.

The R-value of Chennai stood at 1.2, Mumbai at 0.67, Delhi at 0.98, and Kolkata at 0.56, the data showed. If this value drops below 1, the pandemic is considered to have ended.

The R-value of Mumbai and Kolkata indicates that peak is over there and it is becoming endemic while for Delhi and Chennai it is still close to 1, said Dr Jayant Jha, Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics, IIT Madras

Jha further said as per their analysis, the coronavirus peak is likely to come in the next 14 days till February 6.

The preliminary study was conducted 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.