To lift or not to lift : the Lockdown embroglio

*To lift or not to lift : the Lockdown embroglio*

It has been four long months since the world came to a standstill due to the novel Coronavirus, with people locking their doors and staying indoors. This gave governments and medical facilities time to get their house in order and attend to the constant stream of infected patients pouring in day after day. 

With viral transmission coming under control and economies buckling under the pressure of industries shutting down, countries are contemplating lifting lockdown restrictions.

But the staggered lift in restrictions has led to a rise in cases. New Zealand, which had successfully eradicated the virus, has seen a spike in new cases, along with China, Iran, and Japan, to name a few. 

Back home, since easing the restrictions, we have seen our cases zoom from 1 lakh to now almost 8 lakhs in no time.

States which had eased restrictions and opened up have had to hastily enforce the lockdown, more harshly than before.

Lockdown is meant to prevent the spread of infection from one person to another, to protect ourselves and others. This means, not stepping out of the house except for buying necessities, reducing the number of trips outside, and ideally only a single, healthy family member making the trips when absolutely necessary.

 Realistically, a complete lockdown cannot be continuously maintained beyond a couple of months. We don't have a choice but to reopen gradually after that as people start getting restless.

The lockdown can be only eased in a "graded manner in areas that are not hotspots" and that the hotspots remained cordoned off.

Like other affected countries, India will have to prepare itself for what Gabriel Leung, an infectious disease epidemiologist and dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong, describes as several rounds of "suppress and lift" cycles .

During these periods "restrictions are applied and relaxed, applied again and relaxed again, in ways that can keep the pandemic under control but at an acceptable economic and social cost."

Also, Dr Leung observes, "how best to do that will vary by country, depending on its means, tolerance for disruption and its people's collective will. In all cases, however, the challenge essentially is a three-way tug of war between combating the disease, protecting the economy and keeping society at an even keel".

It is going to be tougher for India with its vast size, densely packed population and enfeebled public health system. 

Also, no country in the world possibly has so much inter-state migration of casual workers, who are the backbone of the services and construction industries.

How will India manage to return these workers to their work places - factories, farms, building sites, shops - without a substantial easing of public transport at a time when crowded trains and buses can be a vector of transmission and easily neutralise the gains of the lockdown? 

Even allowing restricted mobility - allowing social distancing, temperature checks and passenger hygiene - would put considerable pressure on the public transport system.

The policy choices are fiendishly tough, and the answers are far from easy. 

India bungled the lockdown by not anticipating the exodus of millions of migrant workers from cities. 

The weeks ahead will tell whether the fleeing men, women and children carried the infection to their villages. 

The country simply cannot afford to make similar mistakes again while trying to relax the lockdown. 

Nitin Pai of The Takshashila Institution, a think tank, believes states should be left to decide on easing restrictions, and decisions "should be based on threat [of infection], which should be determined by extensive testing".

The consequence is that the country’s gradual exit from lockdown in July will be a bigger gamble than it may have been at a later stage. In weighing the risks to public health of easing lockdown against the economic risks of not doing so, the prime minister has said that the government’s guiding principle would be to trust people to “use their common sense in the full knowledge of the risks”.

Let us hope that the Indian people repose the faith of the Prime Minister.

Else, it will be a disaster.