Shailendra Rai, Resilience Advisor, VSO Myanmar
Many countries have heavily restricted people’s movement, including Malaysia and Indonesia, while parts of Europe and India have declared lockdown. China placed intensive and authoritarian movement restrictions on Wuhan as early as mid-January and dramatically reduced the growth of cases. Singapore and Hong Kong did not declare full lock down but did take a number of strong measures such as closing schools and restricting travel early on and focused on testing and contact tracing.
People have different interpretations of what a lockdown means, generally it means to limit freedom of movement. Covid 19 lock down first occurred in Italy when the government placed a quarter of the population in the entire region of Lombardy and 14 neighbouring provinces in lockdown with the result that approximately 25,000 Italians quickly exited the area to reach that part of the country that was still ‘free’, many of them no doubt carrying the virus with them. This led the government to change policy within a day and impose a lockdown on the whole country. So is there a “trigger point” for when a lockdown might be implemented. Is there any yardstick for declaring lockdown or if there is any yardstick then whether it is uniform in all countries or yardstick are countries specific. These questions remain unanswered. The most effective time to take strong action is extremely early, when the threat appears to be small or even before there are any cases. But if the intervention actually works, it will appear in retrospect as if the strong actions were an overreaction. This is a game many politicians don’t want to play. Throughout Europe and the United States, they are repeating many of the errors made early on in Italy, where the pandemic has turned into a disaster. It is unquestionably Italy’s biggest crisis since World War II.
Lockdown- A part of the problem
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a lockdown of the whole country, an estimated 1.3 billion people. In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a lockdown of the whole country, an estimated 1.3 billion people. After successful of “Janta curfew” and “Clapping campaign, 21 days lockdown was announced by government exposed the pre-planning of policy decision maker because millions of migratory labourers congregated on the roads on foot and wanted to migrate for their home town.
“Tabligi Jamyaet”occurrence also increase risk of spread of virus at community’s level. While people visiting religious places like Tirupati and Vaishno Devi are still not tested and not reported by media as threat of community spread.
The social distancing did not follow by people also increase threats spread out of virus at local level. Sudden and uninformed lockdown creates chaos and disorder in the country and left the marginalized groups such as the poor communities who are at most risk again in a more vulnerable situation. Furthermore, even a nation-wide lockdown does not disincentivise internal movement, especially when economic activity is compulsorily ceased and people’s concern focuses on exiting high-risk areas where possible. France has witnessed thousands exiting Paris for the countryside. Italy has seen continual movement of people out of the so-called ‘infected areas’.
South Africa began a 21-day lockdown with the army out in the streets to enforce it. In Zimbabwe, a 21-day army-enforced lockdown. In Kenya, a 13-year-old boy was shot and killed by police while standing on his balcony in Nairobi during curfew. In Uganda, motorbike drivers were hospitalised after being shot by police for violating movement restrictions.
Lock down- A part of the solution
Lockdown is not a “magic solution” to the COVID-19 outbreak but a part of series of brakes needed to handle the situation. “There is no such magic solution to cover 19 as two-week lockdown and then we are free from the virus. It will not happen.”said National Development Minister Lawrence Wong on Tuesday (Mar 31). World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told G20 leaders, “The pandemic is accelerating at an exponential rate.” Bruce Aylward, senior advisor to the WHO Director-General, says governments must keep their populations under lockdown while chasing down every suspect case for testing, and treating and isolating those who test positive. Several countries have done with all these slowdowns and shutdowns in workplaces and educational institutions and in society is they really slowed down the rate of increase of the Covid outbreaks but they actually haven’t broken the transmission chain.
How long the lockdown should last?
The best indicator of how long the lock down might last comes from China, because China is the only country that has reduced the cases in escalating COVID-19 outbreak. China, across the 31 provinces, all of which were affected at one point or another, the longest and most difficult was Wuhan the epicenter of outbreak which remains locked down nearly 10 weeks starting from January and all of February, March, and much of April (See figure-Estimated timing of lockdown). Now, there are many other provinces, however, that were able to manage this with a much shorter shutdown period, that ranged anywhere from a month to two months. It depends on the context how well control measures were taken to control outbreak.
Conclusion
Lockdown is a part of the solution not the only solution. A final problem with national lockdowns is that, by their very nature, they have no ‘exit’ strategy; ‘containment’ or ‘mitigation’ of the virus is effected through enforcing a change in public behaviour. South Korea stands out for not having gone down the route of territorial lockdowns and for avoiding severe restrictions on freedom of movement, while at the same time achieving a significant degree of success in controlling the spread of the virus and not generating panic-buying amongst its population. This has been achieved through extraordinary levels of testing, especially to identify asymptomatic carriers, the quarantining of infected individuals, contact tracing and then further testing and other measures to control the spread, reinforced by the use of technology to track carriers and warn others of a ‘Covid-19 patient’ in their vicinity. This has allowed Koreans to continue, to a much greater extent than anywhere in Europe and North America, their everyday lives and economic activities.
The Korean health system has the capacity to test 15,000 people per day and has tested over a quarter of a million people since the beginning of the outbreak, meaning it has carried out 3,692 tests per million people (which contrasts, for example, with 5 tests per million in the United States). It is still experiencing further localised outbreaks of the virus, but these are dealt with rapidly using the same method. Lockdown really requires finding every single case, testing every suspect case, confirming them, isolating the suspect cases, quarantining the others.
With inputs from Ranjan Kumar, Program Associate, National Institute of Disaster Management, Southern Campus and Parveen Kumar, Project Officer, District Disaster Management Authority, Haryana.
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