The Locked World: Will Lockdown Help?

“Lockdown” refers to compulsory quarantines or non-compulsory advisory to stay at home, bans on gatherings and events, closure of certain types of businesses, public transports and public spaces.

As per the latest reports, out of 3.4 lakhs cases reported worldwide, approximately 81000, 59000 and 35000 cases are from China, Italy and USA respectively. Death toll surged to 14,700 worldwide with China, Italy, Iran and Spain taking the major hit. Current situation in Italy is the worst among all with close to 5400 cases of death, even higher than the China. Certain measures are being implemented worldwide to impede the spread of the Novel Coronavirus.

“what we really need to focus on is finding those who are sick, those who have the virus, and isolate them, find their contacts and isolate them,” – Dr Mike Ryan

Dr Mike Ryan said: “The danger right now with the lockdowns … if we don’t put in place the strong public health measures now, when those movement restrictions and lockdowns are lifted, the danger is the disease will jump back up.”

The epicentre of COVID-19, Wuhan was locked down on 23 January for nearly six weeks consequently deserting the streets and locals self quarantining themselves in their homes. WHO applauded China’s preventive measures as it restricted many more cases to emerge.The draconian measures imposed by China a month ago, may have saved thousands of people from the infection.

France’s president Emmanuel Macron said under the new measures Europe’s borders will close from Tuesday for a period of 30 days due to the coronavirus outbreak. He said all travel between non European countries and EU nations was being suspended.

“Europe has now become the epicenter of the pandemic,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

Italy has banned any movement inside the country and closed all non-essential businesses. Italy exceeded China’s death toll last week. More than 5,500 Italians are testing positive every day, with the average age of those dying 78.5. The government has sent in the army to enforce the lockdown in Lombardy, the northern region at the center of the outbreak, where bodies have piled up in the Churches.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte called it the country’s most difficult crisis since the Second World War: Italy will close its factories and all production that is not absolutely essential.

India observed a partial lockdown, a self imposed quarantine for 14 hours known as “Janta Curfew” yesterday following an appeal by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Though his appeal went fruitful, some citizens while obeying his call to clap and express gratitude to the “warriors” (the acronym he used for those who are working to provide essential services and goods), went too far taking it to the streets, clapping and beating utencils, completely forgetting the “Janta Curfew”. Today, the Indian Government has placed the country under lockdown till the end of this month as efforts to impede the spread of novel corona virus. Keeping in view the fact that India is the world’s Second most populated country, chances of spreading COVID-19 is far greater than any European country.

According to WHO, lockdown is not enough to defeat Corona virus. Experts from the World Health Organization said that countries can’t simply lockdown their societies and that public health measures are needed to contain the virus.

Though, the world is implementing each and every measure possible to stop further spread of this pandemic, it is also necessary to find those who are infected, isolate them, find those who came in contact with them and isolate them as well.