Lockdown will no longer help in COVID-19 fight: Virologist
NEW DELHI: The nationwide lockdown will no longer help India in its fight against Covid-19, and in its place community-driven containment, isolation and quarantine strategies have to be brought into play, leading virologist Shahid Jameel said.
The recipient of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology also stressed that testing should be carried out vigorously to identify coronavirus hotspots and isolate those areas. “Our current testing rate at 1,744 tests per million population is one of the lowest in the world. We should deploy both antibody tests and confirmatory PCR tests. This will tell us about pockets of ongoing infection and past (recovered) infection. This will provide data to open up gradually and let economic activity resume,” Jameel said.
He stressed that testing has to be dynamic to continuously monitor red, orange and green zones and change these based on that data. About community transmission of Covid-19 in India, Jameel said the country reached that stage long ago.
Lockdown bought India time in its fight against coronavirus, but continuing it is unlikely to yield any further dividend, Jameel said.
“Instead, community-driven local lockdowns, isolations and quarantines have to come into play. Building trust is most important so that people follow rules. A public health problem cannot be dealt with as a lawand-order problem.”
AIIMS against ending quarantine for medics
The Resident Doctors Association (RDA) of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) termed the government’s decision to end the need to quarantine healthcare workers after Covid-19 duty a “non-scientific approach”, saying it would prove detrimental. Shortening quarantine duration and denying mandatory testing on day 5-7 after duty will turn into a deadly combination which would derail the battle against pandemic, RDA said.