Covid - India - Lockdown

Lockdown failed due to unscientific implementation

--Members of PM’s COVID-19 task force

On 17 May, for the third time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the Narendra Modi administration extended India’s lockdown, the Indian government did so without seeking scientific inputs from a national task force constituted to advise the central government on its pandemic response. Lockdown had failed to achieve its purpose due to the government’s failure to take crucial parallel measures, such as developing India’s testing capacity and medical infrastructure.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the lockdown has failed,” an epidemiologist who is a member of the task force told us, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Social distancing, wearing masks, and hand hygiene works. However, till date, there is no evidence that lockdowns can cut down transmission.”

“The rationale for lockdown was to buy time to prepare ourselves in terms of logistics, preparing our hospitals, preparing our manpower, preparing guidelines, standard operating procedures,”

“Biggest issue with lockdown is that many national responses think of it as a main or only measure of control—it is not. “It is a component of an overall comprehensive strategy, which must use the time to prepare health systems, populations, and supply chains.”

The centre had failed “in containing spread to multiple sites in the country, failure on political and administrative front in providing social services to people under lockdown and migrants, failure of risk communication and countering stigma.”

“It does not add any extra value other than ensuring forcible social distancing,” he told us, discussing the lockdown. It is of no use to place blame people, especially in cities where so many are homeless—where were you going to lockdown the homeless families? Around 20 percent of population in any big city lives in slums.” The lockdown itself, without other measures and policies to fight the pandemic, “hardly achieves anything,”.

“Lockdown as a tool only makes sense if you have the back up of laboratories, and shore up testing,” the epidemiologist said. “Without testing, it is like having a revolver, but with no bullet in it. Any sensible policymaker, would have looked at the data, take some time to think about it, plan effectively what we should do, why, and how before implementing the first lockdown.”

“The withdrawal of lockdown would be a political decision, which would be justified with pseudo-science or semi-scientific information,”

https://caravanmagazine.in/amp/health/members-pm-covid-19-task-force-say-lockdown-failed-due-to-unscientific-implementation?__twitter_impression=true&fbclid=IwAR3MZL1cBqs5FcnPS-TxPFe05qPXy6qFGrC8Oah-Uq1Wq0lWiex2yyhNKeg