COVID FIGHTING STRATEGY IN PLACE, INDIA PREPARED TO LIFT LOCKDOWN
‘The strategy was simple: to Use the lockdown to ramp Up infrastructure to fight the Virus’.
Government of India, in coordination with various state governments, has used the 50-plus days of lockdown to combat the novel coronavirus, to prepare for the eventuality when the lockdown is lifted, even though cases soar. Sources say that the government’s advisers, using various data, have advocated the lifting of the lockdown.
“The strategy was simple. Use the lockdown to ramp up the infrastructure to fight the virus so that when the lockdown is lifted, we will not be ill-prepared to handle the cases even if they rise astronomically,” a senior government functionary told The Sunday Guardian.
Government officials in multiple ministries with whom this newspaper interacted, said that the economic cost of the lockdown was too huge and that the country cannot withstand any further lockdown without the economy going into a major recession.
India, as per multiple experts and reports, has lost close to $200 billion because of the 50-plus days of lockdown during which all economic activities came to a standstill. As per Barclays Research, India was losing $26 billion per week due to the lockdown.
International rating agency Nomura earlier last week further lowered India’s GDP growth rate to -5.2% from its earlier predicted -0.4%. The agency has further predicted that the lockdown has caused an output loss of more than 8%.
TESTING: BEFORE AND AFTER On 17 March, one week before the lockdown was announced, as per the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), India had just 72 laboratories capable of doing Covid-19 tests. These laboratories were testing a meagre 1,400 Covid-19 samples a day.
On 14 May, India had 507 laboratories that were testing Covid-19 samples, including 351 government laboratories and 140 private laboratories. Officials told The Sunday Guardian that by the end of this month, at least 50 more laboratories will be given permission to carry out the tests.
A senior Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) official said: “By this month end, we will have more than 550 laboratories. We are aiming for at least 1 lakh
A migrant worker’s child drinks water as his mother holds him while waiting for transport to reach a railway station to board a train to their home state of Uttar Pradesh, in Ahmedabad, on Friday. tests per day by the end of this month, which is around 85,000 per day as of today. From 1,400 tests to 1 lakh tests in 50 days is a quantum jump. Similarly, we had done around 25,000 tests on 24 March; today we have crossed 2,030,000 tests. Be it the number of laboratories or the number of tests being done daily, we have improved the numbers considerably.”
According to him, the new kits that have been developed by government and private enterprises are now taking considerably less time to give results, which has also given the government the confidence that it is ready to lift the lockdown with the number of laboratories and testing capabilities “sufficient” to identify new Covid-19 patients within an acceptable time limit.
When the lockdown was imposed, India was testing 0.015 per 1,000 people or 15 per 10 lakh. Now, it is 1.334 per 1,000 people or 1,344 per 10 lakh, almost the same number the United Kingdom was testing on 24 March. The population of United Kingdom is 6.7 crore, India has around 130 crore. Indonesia with a population of 27 crore and about 14,500
There is a breathless hush in the national capital and neighbouring Gurugram over the Bois Locker Room chat on Instagram where teenagers discussed future sex positions with future girlfriends, including flipping girls over their stomach during sex. Cops probing the case are totally tight-lipped, refusing to name those in the chat. Three have been arrested after details of the conversation went public. Among those arrested are the chat administrator and a juvenile. A separate probe is on to get details of a suicide of a 17-year-old who jumped to death from his 11th floor