India Is Moving Towards A Doomsday situation, Is It Advisable To Remove Covid-19 Lockdown In A Country Where People Fail To Maintain Social Distancing?

Is It Advisable To Remove Covid-19 Lockdown In A Country Where People Are Not Able To Maintain Social Distancing?

The novel coronavirus in mere six months has its hands on more than 200 countries. The infection that originated from China now has its hold on almost all over the world. Day by day the situation in the world is getting worse, medical researchers, vaccine development on the coronavirus is going on in different parts of the world, but till now people who have managed to escape from the spread of the virus are the ones following social distancing and taking all kinds of precautionary measures.   

Surprisingly, just a virus has led the whole world into the complete lockdown and has shaken the foundation of the world. Talking about India, the country is in a complete lockdown since 60 days. The government of India declared a nationwide lockdown of 21 days on March 24, and until now the lockdown has been extended four times. The lockdown in India started when there were only 564 cases of COVID-19 and now the number of coronavirus cases in India has reached over 1 lakh. 

Even after imposing the lockdown and extending it four times in the hope that extension would control the spread of the virus in the country, but the slope of the graph of infected people due to COVID-19 in the country is moving upwards despite moving downwards. Now the question that arises here is that whether the lockdown 4.0 will be extended further or not? Because clearly the lockdown has not improved the situation and condition of the country, rather the situation has become more critical. 

How the containment strategies of the government failed terribly? 

Clearly, the strategies of the government to stop or control the coronavirus infection have failed as this series of lockdown has done nothing good for anyone except the government who have filled its treasures and pockets in the name of donation. Rather the strategies or each step that has been taken by the government to control the spread of the pandemic have gone totally wrong. 

The very first and careless strategy was the unplanned lockdown. The government first ignored the severity of the situation and then suddenly it imposed the lockdown on the country and because of which the people didn’t have the chance to prepare themselves which resulted in huge chaos and millions of migrant workers and people became homeless and now these people are dying because the government lacks compassion, humanity, and empathy. 

The second strategy that went wrong was the relaxations and exemptions that were given to certain industries and sectors in the second and third phases of the lockdown. For example, the opening of liquor shops which led to long and large queues of the people near the liquor shops and where the norms of social distancing were violated and, if this was the strategy of the government to improve the economic conditions in the country then this proves that how hollow our system and economy have become. 

The third strategy that is going wrong is the exemptions that have been provided now in the fourth phase of the lockdown that is opening of markets and all shops except the malls and metros. And now the result and repercussions of these exemptions are in front of you no social distancing are being followed in the markets because of which the coronavirus cases in India have jumped to 125,149 in the last 11 days. 

If the containment strategies and supply chain management of the government are so excellent then why millions of migrant workers have become homeless and are dying out of hunger? Why even after having a decent amount of funds government can’t feed the citizens while they are safe at home? 

Is it advisable to remove lockdown in a country where people are not able to maintain social distancing?

Such a situation in India does not allow the lifting of the lockdown, because despite the lockdown extension for weeks there has been no stoppage in the spread of coronavirus rather the cases have been tripled, and lifting of lockdown and allowing normal functioning of work and people in the country will definitely create a euphoria of COVID-19 in the nation.

The lifting of lockdown can cause the threat of community spread among the people of the country, India has a total population 135.26 crores, which makes it the second-largest populated country of the world, and with such a large population the fear and threat of community spread becomes more and the number of positive coronavirus cases can even reach to crores in weeks.

We all know how we travel in metros, trains, buses. In our country, public transports like buses, local trains, metro, etc. are three times occupied from its usual capacity, especially in office hours the crowd in these public transports is unmanageable. Now, you can imagine how well we maintain the social distancing in markets public places and in public transports, how many times do we even wash hands, how many of us use sanitisers, how many of us wear masks.

So in such a situation maintaining lockdown is necessary to avoid the community spread in India. Because even during the lockdown people have gathered at religious places, near liquor shops, and in markets and only gods know, what they are going to do when the lockdown will open.

India is moving towards a doomsday situation:

The situation in India is getting worse day by day, and somewhere the careless and overconfident attitude of the government is responsible for this condition of the country. That even after knowing what happened in Italy, the country which is known to have the second-best medical facilities of the world and still the Indian government didn’t take the precautionary measures earlier. 

Overnight the country has reported a spike of 6,654 coronavirus cases. The hospitals have become full, the doctors are advising people to self-quarantine or home quarantine themselves because there seems to be a shortage of the beds in hospitals. 

A few days back a government employee who worked in the ministry of external affairs was diagnosed with COVID-19 and maybe silently he was carrying the virus inside his body for more than 14 days but when he got to know that he has coronavirus infection he immediately ran to the hospital but the hospital refused to take the case because of the shortage of the beds and he almost went to more than 10 hospitals but from every hospital, he got the same response.

Now you can imagine that if the people who are working for the government are not getting proper assistance and treatments in the hospitals, then what will happens to the poor and common public in our country. Is India on the verge of becoming the next Italy where there was a shortage of ventilators and PPE kits. The doctors became helpless and hopeless and at last, the patients were on the streets as there were shortage of beds in the hospitals?

One can imagine now that where the country is heading the recovery from that stage is very scary and slow and now it’s high time for the Indian government to take some favourable and effective measures to save India from becoming a nation of corpses.