  As the ravages caused by COVID-19 pandemic are becoming inevitable with every
moment, monitoring and understanding of transmission and fatality rate has
become even more paramount for containing its spread. The key purpose of this
analysis is to report the real-time effective reproduction rate ($R_t$ ) and
case fatality rates (CFR) of COVID-19 in South Asia region. Data for this study
are extracted from JHU CSSE COVID-19 Data source up to July 31, 2020. $R_t$ is
estimated using exponential growth and time-dependent methods. R0 package in
R-language is employed to estimate $R_t$ by fitting the existing epidemic
curve. Case fatality rate is estimated by using Naive and Kaplan-Meier methods.
Owing to exponential increase in cases of COVID-19, the pandemic will ensue in
India, Maldives and in Nepal as $R_t$ was estimated greater than 1 for these
countries. Although case fatality rates are found lesser as compared to other
highly affected regions in the world, strict monitoring of deaths for better
health facilities and care of patients is emphasized. More regional level
cooperation and efforts are the need of time to minimize the detrimental
effects of the virus.
