Lifting the lockdown with a proper planning – Burning Issues – Free PDF

• As India ponders a shift towards zonal containment to let the economy function, we must work out a finelycalibrated plan of when and how to do this. We can’t afford any error
• We have to take lessons from countries that have managed to control the epidemic with nuanced action. Once the three weeks are over, it is important to take steps to unwind the all-India lockdown in a measured way and have more targeted lockdowns.
• India has announced a temporary countrywide lockdown, with only “essential commodities/services” and their supply chains exempt.
• This is based on the advice of the medical establishment, which is reported to believe that this it is the best or only way to “flatten the curve” of transmission
• Plans seem afoot to shift from an all-India closure to a strategy of “aggressive containment” of infections within clusters marked out on the country’s map, with people only in these kept under strict isolation (and buffer zones around them).
• Phased Lockdown Exit
• Identify the Hotspot and Minimize the Spread
• Separate Hospitals for COVID-19
• A selective isolation strategy thus proposed would only be effective if it is accompanied by supportive measures for the young.
• These include tracking through smartphone apps and compensating employees for the risk undertaken by offering wage support.
• Once a minimum set of employees return to work and firms resume operations, older employees can resume work from their homes.
• A lockdown also has social costs which have not been accounted for at all here.
• Therefore, we must take stringent measures and all of us must practise socio-spatial distancing to ensure that the curve is indeed flattened convincingly enough for all restrictions to finally be removed.
• Random sample checks
• Hotspots kept locked down
• Following South Korea, we need to locate regions and pockets which have to be kept under close watch and locked down, with others being opened up with rules of behaviour in place—masks, social distancing, quarantining those unwell—so that the rest of India can get back to producing goods and services, and help the locked-down areas.
• People who must endure containment need special care not, say, the scare of police drones summoning batons. Hotspots must not begin to feel like open-air prisons.
• India has done well so far in its fight against covid-19. However, as Prime Minister said, it will indeed be a long fight.

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