Epidemic Landscape and Forecasting of SARS-CoV-2 in India

Aravind Lathika Rajendrakumar; Anand Thakarakkattil Narayanan Nair; Charvi Nangia; Prabal Kumar Chourasia; Mehul Kumar Chourasia; Mohammad Ghouse Syed; Anu Sasidharan Nair; Arun B Nair; Muhammed Shaffi Fazaludeen Koya

The R0 estimated across many studies may not reflect actual transmission potential of virus as these were measured in dynamic cohorts with some sort of mitigation measures. Estimates from studies among closed population such as in Diamond Princess and Wuhan may be more reliable in this regard. 20 Riou et al. estimated a reliable range for R0 which was between 1.4 and 3.8 by simulating Wuhan epidemic incidence trajectories in a cluster environment. 21 We estimated the range of R0 in India to be between 1.42 and 1.84 by comparing estimates from 5 different methods. It can be assumed that the real Ro in India is close to 1.85. The upper limit of uncertainty of R0 in our analysis exceeds 2 which may be indicative of spread of infection at local level and is comparable to European scenario. 22 This is much lower than R0 in most countries and may be indicative of the effectiveness of measures taken at policy level such as lock down, cancellation of flights, social distancing and sealing of identified hotspots.