Who Said India Is Not Finding, Isolating, Testing And Treating Covid-19 Cases?
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2020-03-26 13:21:00
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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the lockdowns being implemented by several countries to combat COVID-19 will not be enough to eradicate the virus from the world. He also said that countries will have to "find, isolate, test and treat". But who gave him the idea that countries like India were under lockdown only and not doing other things like finding, isolating, testing and treating (FITT) suspects or infected persons? And it is no rocket science to know that the virus will only be eradicated when all infected cases are finally treated and no new cases are reported for at least 14 days thereafter. If random cases come up even after that, the danger of community transmission would become almost negligible as such cases can be isolated easily and treated promptly.
Ghebreyesus is thinking only as a health service administrator. He is also viewing the problem purely from a Western viewpoint. When governments in hugely populated countries like India are faced with an epidemic like Covid-19, their first priority is the safety of their citizens. A densely populated country is a sitting target for community transmission of any infectious disease. Hence, the biggest issue with the government is to keep the population away from each other. When warnings and partial lockdowns were not successful, the only way forward was a complete lockdown.
FITT is impossible when people are coming in from abroad and are also moving either within their own areas or all across the country. For, those coming from other countries have been found to flout the self-isolation advice, increasing the risk. Hence, it was absolutely necessary to pin people where they were. The government is now trying to find who all have come in contact with those who are already infected and is isolating them. It has already found 900 persons who came in contact with the infected Delhi mohalla clinic doctor and his family and has quarantined them. It was possible only because these people were pinned to one location due to the lockdown. Otherwise, they would have moved about and the 900 could have been 9000 or even 90000.
Further, once people are pinned for 21 days, the asymptomatic cases will show outward symptoms and be tested and treated. 134 crore people cannot be tested overnight by making them stand in a queue. There has to be a reason for testing. The government of India is moving in the right direction (we can forget the criticism that it delayed the lockdown or that 21 days is too much). To assume or infer that the lockdown is only what the government has done to combat Covid-19 is to assume that it is being run by irresponsible people or that health service administrators in India do not know anything. Before drawing conclusions from an act of any government in such emergencies, people have to think like overall administrators in addition to the field of their expertise.
