The government was audacious in taking the decision to impose a 21-day lockdown in India to fight the Coronavirus pandemic. But it is surely not enough, further remedial steps need to be taken to assist the citizens in normalizing their lives.
The main intent of the lockdown remains clear i.e. to steepen the curve and put a check on the rapid increase in the number of positive cases. Otherwise, it could clot the healthcare services and shatter the Indian economic and social conditions.
As evident from the global scenario the top three priorities over the coming few weeks are: Test, protect health care workers and try to obtain better and more dependable scientific data.
The testing rates are still a grave reason of concern. India can and should try alternate innovative measures to enable rapid expansion in testing facilities.
Also, the testing should be made free so that money doesn’t become a deciding factor in the detection of the positive cases.
The Indian Council of Medical Research intends to increase the testing rates to about 1 lac tests daily in the coming months.
But even this would be tardy and things need to be done faster.
Mobile testing sites must be made functional along with a few random testing of communities.
The National AIDS Control Programme has come forward to offer lessons to maintain the standard of testing and reporting.
Also, positive cases should be catalogued in national biorepositories along with the basic confidential information on each person.
Suggestions: –
Steps should be taken to ease monetary access to needy people who are tested positive to enable making necessary arrangements for self-care.
Also, the respective family members should be quarantined and get tested. Helpers should be assigned to respective communities to meet the basic needs.
The Indian Army, like their Chinese counterparts, can be asked to build temporary field hospitals for the extremely fatal cases.
IT companies can help connect people and digitize the caring system by providing basic information regarding the testing and treatment sites. As it has been reported that covid-19 reinfection isn’t likely, recovered patients should be made helpers to assist the needy people. This will further help reduce the blot of a positive test.
Secondly, to ensure that there is no spreading of covid-19 at crowded public places, hospitals should be made to focus primarily on treatment.
Discrete teams should be made to differentiate between the presumed and the non-cases. Also, sick asymptomatic officials can put others especially the older patients at greater risk of death from Covid-19.
Therefore, a collective industrial thrust is necessary to produce protective personal equipment as per WHO standards to keep the health officials from getting infected.
Every frontline worker should have access to these protective gears. Domestic industries can be ordered to produce millions of masks, gloves, sanitisers and lacs of ventilators.
The surplus amounts can be sold or better donated globally.
Lastly, there should be complete transparency in the representation of data related to the covid-19.
Surveys should be conducted by the municipalities to collect categorical data and get an idea of the probable demography at risk.
On the similar lines of the Singapore model, follow up calls should be made and random antibody tests should be conducted.
Apart from this, testing in morgues should be organized to get a more reasonable estimate of the fatality rate.
Instead of relying on mathematical models to get an idea of the intensity of the outbreak actual data should be regularly updated and made available.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with the health minister and the chief ministers of various states have come together, keeping their political ideologies aside, to fight the pandemic.
By honest representation of data and proper communication every citizen can play their individual role in flattening the curve and curb the spread of the deadly virus.
