R-naught

R-naught

Part of: GS Prelims and GS-II- Health

In News:

• The R-naught, or R0, is a virus’s basic reproductive number — an epidemiologic metric used to describe the contagiousness of infectious agents.
• At its simplest, the basic reproductive number can show us how worried we should be about infection 
• If the R0 is above one, each case is expected to infect at least one other person on average, and the virus is likely to keep spreading. 
• If it’s less than one, a group of infected people are less likely to spread the infection.