Experts bat for systematic approach in easing lockdown

With the lockdown 3.0 to combat the spread of COVID-19 is coming to an end, the experts in disaster management bats for a systematic approach for easing the lockdown.

According to Alec Lobo, Faculty of Centre for Disaster Management at Administrative Training Institute (ATI), Mysuru, relaxing lockdown needs a very systematic approach. It would be prudent to make a few experiments by allowing vulnerable people living in large cities to move to rural areas. The testing for these people need to be intensified on priority.

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After the relaxation of lockdown, people would again move back and forward so the very purpose of the lockdown would be futile. After testing for COVID-19, the families or individuals need to be stamped as “no virus” and then they should be allowed to travel out of the city. If this experiment is successful, it can be extended to the whole of the state of Karnataka, according to him.

Quoting an example, he says, all the references of plagues in the past indicate that people abandoned their villages and towns and stayed in open fields when they were hit by plague outbreaks.

As per the study, the period of the infection reaching the peak and subsiding would be for about three months after the lockdown is relaxed in Karnataka. The months of May, June and July being the peak infection months and an estimated 60 to 70 lakh people may be infected and about one lakh people may be hospitalised due to infections, if no stringent lockdown and social distancing measures are followed, Lobo said.

Lobo said that the challenge thrown by this pandemic is such that everyone has to do the preparedness and mitigation in the response phase with no clear insight into the recovery. Devising a strategy to tackle COVID-19 pandemic is very challenging given the limited knowledge about the way the virus behaves.

For all other natural or man-made disasters, strategy would be to do something to lessen the likely effects of the disaster. Lobo says, “There would be lot of activities needed to be planned, organised and executed by the disaster managers. Whereas this pandemic is beyond any disaster management strategy as the strategy here is to stop everyone from doing anything at all.”