As Covid Rises, India's 'R' Factor Highest In A Year. What It Means

Concern over an alarming increase in new coronavirus cases in India - 131,750 over the past 72 hours - was underlined Monday by a spike in the 'R', or 'reproduction rate', of the virus, which has jumped to 1.32 - the highest since April last year, when there were fewer than 27,000 cases. The 'R' factor - a statistic used worldwide to track, and potentially, control the spread of the virus - is a measure of how many people are being infected by one infected person.