Lockdown exit plan

Pv vivek, Delhi

In Centre’s Covid-19 lockdown exit plan, 1 principle and 2 crucial worries

The Centre is leaning towards a calibrated exit from the Covid-19 national lockdown beginning May 3 that would strike a balance between ensuring the pandemic doesn’t flare-up and easing restrictions in order to revive the economy.The government has, from this week, already relaxed restrictions in rural areas to let people harvest crops and work in a select group of industries with access controls and proper protocols.

“From May 3, the idea is to expand the list of permitted activities in a way that does not lead to a free-for-all,” a top government official told Hindustan Times. The basic principle is to adopt a step-by-step approach under constant monitoring as the Modi government knows that India is in for a long haul.There was a time when the global community including the WHO was worried about how India would be able to control the virus infections and death with experts and armchair strategists predicting a doomsday scenario. We showed the world by pre-empting the virus through strong procedures. We will be able to handle it in future also,”said a senior Union minister of the government.

The exit plan is still work in progress and will depend, for one, on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s interaction with chief ministers on April 27. In the end, it will be driven by the Centre‘s analysis of how the Sars-CoV-2 pathogen that causes Covid-19 is spreading within states, districts and the thousands of containmenment zones notified across the country closer to May 3.

Officials associated with the empowered committees mandated to track the disease and formulate the government’s response said their primary worry at the moment is the spread of the disease in the metro cities, particularly in its slum clusters due to high density of population and lack of social distancing.

HT