Lockdown Exit: A Major Dilemma
Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.
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By Linus Garg
First publised on 2020-04-12 13:35:57
About the Author
Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.
View all posts by this Author
The Central government is grappling with a major dilemma. The country has been under lockdown for 19 days. Going by the figures released by the Health Ministry, India has been able to fight the spread of novel coronavirus to a great extent (although the low rate of testing is perhaps not providing a true indication of the spread of the virus). But the closure has taken a big toll on the economy that was already suffering a slowdown. With everything else other than essential commodities not being sold, either online or off, and nothing other than that being produced too, companies are going to suffer huge losses. The plight of daily wage earners and other workers, who use their skills to do business, has also to be taken into consideration before taking any decision. The RBI has already said that growth outlook has been âdrastically alteredâ by the pandemic. Hence, the government has to make a delicate trade-off between the need to save lives and the need to restart the wheels of the economy. That was indicated by the Prime Minister when he said that India will now work for âjaan bhi, jahaan bhiâ.
One understands that if businesses are not allowed to resume operations in a restricted way, some of them will have to close down. The government cannot be expected to provide across-the-board financial relief to all small and medium businesses. Hence, it is required that they are allowed to start operations in a restricted way. But if community transmission happens as a result of allowing economic activity to resume, then all hell will break loose. India has neither the infrastructure nor the resources to test and treat even 20000 new patients every day and in community transmission, the number of patients in a hugely and densely populated country like India can be five times more. While the policy of identifying hotspots and focusing on them or working on cluster management has paid rich dividends until now, one believes that it will not work as effectively once the third stage is reached. Hence, the government should wait for another 15 days and keep the complete lockdown in place. It should continue the hotspot and cluster strategy in place and intensify testing. An ICMR study for patients having Severe Acute Respiratory Illness (SARI) has revealed that 1.8% of them tested positive for COVID-19. But the biggest worry was that nearly 40% of the positive cases did not have any record of contact with an infected person or international travel. Does that hint at community transmission already happening in some places? The government has chosen to call it cluster transmission but leaving terminology aside for once, it should keep this report in mind before firming up any exit plan for the lockdown.
