COVID-19, Doubling of Cases In India

The good news is, the lock down is having a positive impact on the spread of the infectious virus, COVID-19. How do we know that? The chart above shows that at the beginning of April the Doubling of COVID-19 positive cases was approximately at 3-4 days. However, the current doubling of cases stands at 12 days. India saw this increase in doubling rate within 30 days. Given the lock down went into effect on 25th March 2020, just before April, we can easily draw a correlation between the lock down and the doubling rate.

To better understand why this increase from 3-4 days to 12 days is a good thing, we must first understand that COVID-19 is an Infectious Disease and that means it can spread. To measure the spread, there is a metrics called “R-Naught (R0)”. Currently, the R-Naught of COVID-19 is about 2.5. That means, for every 1 positive case, chances are that another 2.5 people would catch the virus.

With a R-Naught of 2.5, the number of cases can reach 10,000 within the first 14 days of the first positive case. What would the number of cases be 14 days later? A whopping 16 Crore (160 Million) positive cases. That 10,000 positive cases in 14 days becomes approximately 16,000 times. To put things into perspective, the population of Mumbai is 1.6 Crore (2011). So, an infectious disease with a R-Naught of 2.5 has the potential of infecting 10 Mumbai sized cities within 28 days. With this understanding, it should be clear why putting in place measures in the first 14 days is so important for stopping or delaying the spread.

A positive outlook for doubling of COVID-19 cases in India

The number of COVID-19 positive cases have doubled until 4th of May. 12 days later, 16th May (today), the number of cases have not yet doubled. This pretty much puts us on track for the next 1-2 days to continue maintaining or improving the doubling rate. However, given things remain the way they are today, are we on track to further improve our doubling rate over the next 12 days?

Looking at the Total number of cases for each day since May 4th and considering the average number of new cases for the same time period, we can do a simple analysis to predict if we are on track to further improve this number.

Since May 5th, the average number of new COVID-19 positive cases has been a little above 3,500 cases. Assuming we keep the same average, we could see the doubling of cases go up to at least 25 days by mid June.

To be noted, extending the same kind of lock down that we have had for the past 1 and a half month seems rather unlikely. An extended lock down would only cause more harm to the Indian economy and hence to the Indian people. The government has already began to slowly relax the lock down. With the recent opening of Liquor shops and the announcement of Orange, Green and Red zones, it would be interesting to see how this pandemic spans out over the next 4 weeks. I for certain am going to download this data and again and revise my COVID-19 analysis for India.

Note – you can download my analysis file by clicking on “add to cart”. Obviously, it is free but it will require you to register with the blog.

Citation –

Analysis – Done by Anant Agnihotri, published on https://mymixedthoughtsblog.com/covid-19-doubling-of-cases-in-india/

Raw data – Max Roser, Hannah Ritchie, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Joe Hasell (2020) – “Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)”. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: ‘https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus’ [Online Resource]

-Anant Agnihotri