Bangalore: In an indication of infection Covid-19 decreased in the state, the R value has fallen below the psychological threshold after crossing the first week of this month.
However, with the lessons learned the hard way during the second wave, the government is unlikely to lift restrictions such as night curfews in the near future.
“Covid situation in the state is under control since new cases is stable,” said Chief Secretary P Ravikumar.
“The decline in the value of R is a trend that is encouraging.
However, we were able to facilitate and ease the sidewalk.
Let us wait for the festival season to cope with and observe the situation that arose prior to receiving the call status of the sidewalk.” Rated R, measure the speed of the spread of the virus, has reached six in May when the second wave of infection was at its peak before sliding at the end of June.
It reached 1.02 in August, before it dropped to 0.92 on August 9.
Officials say it fell further to reach 0.89 on Aug.
18.
Ensuring value R below is significant in terms of the management of a pandemic.
If more than one, it means that an infected person can spread the virus to more than one person, leading to a gradual surge.
“This decline is an encouraging trend, especially after briefly crossing the mark earlier this month,” said Dr.
Mk Sudarshan, chairman of the Technical Advisory Committee Covid-19 (TAC).
“This is very important because the school will reopen for regular classes for grades 9 to 12 from Monday.” Low levels of sustained R value is reflected in the fact that new cases daily has been hovering around the 1,500-Mark since the last week of June.
However, the most encouraging trend is that the rate of the overall test positivity (TPR) in the country has dropped below 0.8%, with hotspots such as Bengaluru record low level (0.5%) than the average state.
Even Dakshina Kannada district, which recently entered the red zone after breaking the mark TPR 5%, has trended down to the level of positivity that fell below 3.5%.
Hospitalization also reached low.
On Friday, just 131 of the 1,939 beds in Bengaluru Covid occupied.
However, alarmed by the surge is mainly due to a series of festival is around the corner, the government has decided to continue at least until the Ganesh Chaturthi restrictions on 10 September.
While the evening, which begins at 9 pm, has been clamped in the entire state included in Bengaluru, weekend curfew has been imposed in the border districts of Kerala, where a pandemic situation is still grim.
Kerala has a TRP of more than 15%.
Pub business has not been allowed to proceed while the theater can be operated with only 50% occupancy.
Noting the curve is flat, many experts have been predicting decline further infection and said it also indicates the end of the second wave.
“Except for slight fluctuations, the curve has been flat since the end of June,” said a leading epidemiology Dr T Jacob John.
“Although it will not reach zero for practical reasons, this trend shows that the end of the second wave somewhere in June or early July.”