Coincidentally, the COVID-19, a dreadful virus surfaced in the year
2019 December with Wuhan, China being its epicenter. A lot has happened and has
been happening since then. This quickly spreading Pandemic has reached almost
90% of the countries across the world and most of them are under lock-down as on
today. Indian government has declared nationwide lock-down for 21 days which
started on 24th March 2020. As people are eagerly waiting for the lock-down period
to end, there lot of fun games, Quiz time and other interesting stuff doing rounds on Whatsapp, one of which is - "What is the first thing you will
do after the lock-down?"
Well, many answered, they
wanted to watch their favorite movie, visit their dream destinations, some just
wanted to get out of the house, and some wanted the rest of the people out of
their houses! :D The latter was my choice too and I love the idea of being
quarantined single at my home! Lol... But on giving it a serious thought, apart from these answers, what
is the real meaning of ending a lock-down? How does it guarantee that the Virus
spread has/had stopped and the problem is mitigated? Will anyone dare go out
knowing that people are picking this up even now or have been quarantined suspects of this
deadly Pandemic?
The idea behind the lock-down
from my perspective is this:
Considering the Virus life
cycle to be 21 days, the areas and people affected and infected would end the
cycle and break the chain of spreading it further. Absolutely a fantastic way
to cut down further damage. But isn't it equally important to know when to end
the lockdown. In India, lock-down was exercised in an earlier stage than in
other countries like Italy, US and other European nations who have been the
worst victims of this Pandemic. However, India , considering its massive
population does see all the probabilities of entering all the stages that these
other countries have been through and are at. Given this situation, when is
the ideal time to end the lock-down?
Lets take a look at this from a logical
angle:
COVID-19 is said to have ended
under the following circumstances:
1. There have been no new cases
registered in the past 7 days (incubation period) to 21 days (entire life
cycle). 21 being the higher side, safer to pick this one to leave no stones unturned.
2. All the positive tested
patients must be cured (tested negative in 3 consecutive tests with a gap of 5
days each)
3. There shouldn't be any more
such floating cases (like awaiting results, repeat tests etc)
4. All suspects who have been
quarantined needs to be tested and confirmed negative.
Even if one of the above conditions
are compromised, we will be back to square one. Also, the above cases are
listed considering there is still a ban on international travels.
Lets derive the numbers with
math now on best case possibility:
Considering the official
lock-down end date is 15th of April:
This cannot be, because even as
I write down this blog, many new cases are being identified. More suspects and
cluster infections are identified too. If tracing people and their contacts
shall easily take up a week's time, it takes few more weeks to identify and
quarantine them to contain it, (unless they start showing symptoms, they
may or may not require hospitalizations) best of worst case. Please note
that there are no tests conducted at this point of time. Only people who are
symptomatic are tested. Corona virus can exist without symptoms too!
Now the math: Even in this
hypothetical scenario of best case (all samples been tested, no new cases from
tomorrow and no new quarantines starting tomorrow and everyone strictly follows
the lock-down guidelines and doesn't break rules), the lock-down cannot end before
beginning next month. 7 days to track down contacts and 21 days of their
quarantine.
Worst case:
This is a more easy one to
derive : Until they find a vaccine and/or cure + 21 days !!
What is more feasible?
Instead of keeping the entire
nation under lock-down, or having a blanket lock-down end date, it should be conducted in phases. The lock-down relaxation should happen from the lowest
level. Today, the smallest unit of isolation is a house. The relaxation should
expand at next levels like streets, blocks, communities, set of few
blocks/lanes, group of communities, area etc. Before expanding an isolation level, the people in the current one should meet the 4 criteria above. This can be achieved with a tag or certificate indicating the test conducted date and the result. If in a street/block, all people are tested negative, the isolation level can be elevated to that of a street. They may not be fully equipped with all the rights but now they can at least visit houses, share a snack or watch a movie together in someone's house. The kids are especially benefited when they find their friends to play together. This elevation doesn't mean they still have an access to the outside world, but at least they have a better breathing space than earlier. The monitoring and surveillance of these small groups of people shall continue with revival checkups and updating the tags. Common entertainment areas if comes in the jurisdiction of the isolated expanse, that s a bonus!
This can be tracked by some volunteers. I'm sure one volunteer to keep
check of the condition of people in their lane (like taking temperatures,
asking for help) in each lane/block/street will work wonders. Excuse me for giving this example (I wont be surprised if I get trolled for this) but, if you are in the
IT industry, this is similar to having a scrum model where each volunteer is a scrum
master and makes it easy for the people in that expanse to have a normal life. There can be a simple daily stand-up meetings too :D
The rules within an identified isolation area remains the same. Travelling
outside the isolation area for work/community events, etc etc should be
STRICTLY not allowed. As and when the new expanse is identified, it
is important to also support them with basic essentials (which volunteers can
take up). A small set of support staff can be confined to an expanse identified latest. When this happens in parallel at all places, we can at least
get 80% of the country out of lock-down at the earliest. As the infrastructure
and facilities improve to facilitate the lab tests, the quicker can we distance
less.
Though its all easily said than done, the blanket coverage of a
lock-down start or end shall not work and we will end up in a series of loops of such lock-downs, with perhaps, increased severity every-time. This may trigger frustration and agitation eventually and there
maybe a day when the entire nation is let loose and things go haywire. God
forbid we shall never see such a day!
PS: Please excuse the
language, grammar and typos in this post, if any.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, April 1, 2020
at Wednesday, April 01, 2020
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