THE SECOND WAVE
IN the first week of November, even as India recorded 47,000 new cases within 24 hours and the total active cases stood at 500,000, the country’s health establishment let out a collective sigh of relief. This was the first time since the pandemic began that the all-important R0 (pronounced R-naught), a measure of how contagious an infectious disease is, had dropped below 1 (it was 0.88 on November 6). In a pandemic, an R0 value of less than 1 indicates that the virus is going to eventually stop spreading since it cannot infect enough individuals.
India’s R0 value in November had foretold the eventual fall in Covid cases. Active cases began to drop steadily and the pandemic curve turned downward for the first time. As more people recovered from Covid and fewer got infected, states began to lift restrictions. For a while, it seemed the pandemic was nearing its end. But come February 11, and the curve turned the other way. The number of new cases per day began rising by the hundreds. By early March, roughly 1,500 more cases were being added every day than during the lows in February. With most cases
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