Lock down now

Lock down now

It will be painful, but decrepit healthcare and population pressures leave us no options.

The key takeaway from the global surge of coronavirus cases for India should be the fates of countries that failed to lock down in time when confirmed cases were still relatively small. Countries like China, Italy, Spain and France have gone from a few hundred to several thousand cases in the space of a week. On February 23, a month after China enforced its lockdown in Hubei province, new confirmed cases had dipped to 386 globally, which exploded to 4,000 fresh cases by March 7 and 16,000 cases on March 13. From 18% on March 1, active cases outside China leapt to 84% a fortnight later while China had just 16 new cases on Sunday.

India has few daily cases, perhaps a consequence of restrictions on testing, but we have breached the 100 mark in terms of total active cases. Lear n from Spain: from 124 daily cases on March 7 the country recorded 2,086 daily cases on March 13. Others like Italy and France have also recorded sharp, if not as dramatic, spikes. An early lockdown can flatten our curve before the daily case count reaches the unmanageable hundreds and the genie is out of the bottle. In taking this course there is no room for populist considerations.

Politicians should call off large gatherings and give politicking on streets a miss for a while. Karnataka chief minister BS Yediyurappa has gone from garnering praise for rolling out social distancing measures to earning flak for then attending a lavish wedding feast in which an estimated 3,000 partook. The adage ‘practise what you preach’ applies in this case, while ‘exception proves the rule’ is catastrophic. Educational institutions and movie theatres are being asked to shut down, and rightly so. But exceptions are also being made for some religious gatherings. Navaratra is approaching and administration is in the mood to make exceptions. For Ayodhya’s Ram Navami Mela the district magistrate has promised to take “all necessary care of the health of visiting devotees”.

Such bureaucratic hot air puts devotees at risk, along with the rest of us. It must be called out by Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath, whose combination of political heft and ‘Hindu cred’ can ensure popular compliance. A lockdown is an economic dampener, besides calling for drastic changes in our normal modes of behaviour. Yet, given decrepit healthcare and densely concentrated urban populations, catastrophe awaits if authorities don’t act quickly and decisively.