Context: A team of professors and researchers at IIT Delhi have developed a web-based dashboard ‘PRACRITI’ which can predict the district and state wise transmission rate of COVID-19. 

Key Points

• PRACRITI is the acronym for PRediction and Assesment of CoRona Infections and Transmission in India.
• The dashboard gives detailed State-wise and district-wise predictions of Covid-19 cases in India for a three-week period.
• The data is updated on a weekly basis to accommodate various effects due to administrative interventions, severity of viral strain, change of weather patterns.
• It also accounts for the effect of different lockdown scenarios such as the effect of locking down district boundaries, and implementing different levels of lockdown within a district.
• It also includes the effect of movement of population across district/state borders in the wake of Covid-19.

Provides R0 Value

• PRACRITI provides the R0 values of each district and State based on data available from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), and the World Health Organization (WHO). Reduction of R0 is key in controlling and mitigating Covid-19 in India.

About Reproduction number (R0)

• Reproduction number (R0), pronounced ‘R naught’ refers to the number of people to whom the disease spreads from a single infected person.
• For instance, if an active Covid-19 patient infects two uninfected persons, the R0 value is two.

Its Working

• Predictions are based on a recent mathematical model, namely, Adaptive, Interacting, Cluster-based, Susceptible, Exposed, Infected, Removed (AICSEIR) model.

This is a modified form of the traditional SEIR model and it caters for the interactions that occur between sub-populations such as districts or states. The model divides population into following four classes:

• Susceptible refers to people who have not been exposed to the coronavirus.
• Exposed refers to those who have been exposed to the virus from an infected person.
• Infected refers to those who are actively infected with Covid-19.
• Removed refers to those who are no longer a carrier of the virus.

Its Benefits

• Such a platform will be highly useful for healthcare organisations as well as local and central authorities to efficiently plan for different future scenarios and resource allocation.
• These predictions can help the districts and states having higher R0 to take rigorous measures to control the spread of Covid-19, while for those with low R0 they need to sustain measures and remain very vigilant.