The AFTERMATH OF COVID’19

The last few weeks have been the most unprecedented times in our lives, we have been overwhelmed with the situation surrounding us. In this moment of crisis, it is the solidarity that will see us through. Though we have to maintain social and physical distancing we have to be united in our efforts to safeguards ourselves and our families, friends, and associates. Work from home is the new norm now and one doesn’t know when things will get back to normal. Or if at all, there is this thing called ‘The Normal’ anymore or is this disruption ‘The New Normal’.

Various questions buzz our minds to which there aren’t any easy answers. But the stream of life has to go on and the human activity cannot be curtailed for long. All economic activity can be stopped for some time, for we need to get on top of the emerging situation and let our health workers and the COVID fighters have a semblance of opportunity to fight against the insurmountable odds. But they can’t be stopped for a long period of time.

Because industrial and commercial activities are the very engines of human existence and any action for a prolonged period of time will be detriment to the very fight that the nation is putting up to in the last few weeks. Actually it is a very fine balance that the government will have to calibrate between our will to exist and our will to fight the dreaded virus.

Let me explain this will some simple illustration. The government has allowed the essential items to be open during the lockdown, but supplies have dwindled to a trickle in most of the retail outlets and new stocks aren’t available so easily. There is a problem of logistics and supply for various reasons Viz: lack of supplies from the factories that produce these essential items because these factories aren’t working to their full capacity for reasons viz: lack of workers in their units as mass migration by these workers has led to depletion in workforce in these factories, so the production is hampered by 20 to 25% on account of this. The second cause of a slowdown in the production is the lack of procurement of raw materials by these factories as the factories that produce the raw materials are themselves closed down due to the lockdown. Just about 7 to 8% of the factories are horizontally integrated into this country that produces all the raw materials themselves and a large enough to sustain their supply chain. Some of the bigger brands belong to this category like Hindustan Lever, Procter n Gamble, etc.

But 92% of the branded industry even in the essential sector is dependent on the MSME for their raw materials to produce their final products, be it toiletries, processed food, personal care, health supplements, medicines, etc. So a prolonged lockdown will be detrimental to the supply chain of this 92 % of the companies that will close down for one or the other reason if the lockdown persists for another 15 days beyond the stated 21 days earlier.

Today all industries are at a lockdown be it Construction, Retail, Packaging. Paper, Services, BPO, Events, etc. We can roughly estimate that in a country of 1.3 billion people about 750 million to 800 million are willingly put in a lockdown across the length and breadth of this country, actually, the nos are much higher if you take our younger citizen between the age group of 1 to 14 years also in this the nos would rise to 1 billion to 1.1 billion people. No country of this size has attempted, mind you even China has not attempted to lockdown their entire country for a long period of time. We have only heard of Wuhan that has been lockdown for 84 days at a stretch and only yesterday the lockdown was lifted with great fanfare. No cases of death have been reported from Wuhan and their citizen movement has been restored to the fullest by authorities.

We have to dig deeper into the Chinese model and see what worked for them and how the virus didn’t spread the neighboring cities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing the world is looking at China to learn a lesson from them in containment in these cities, yet they weren’t placed under any lockdown, yes they practiced social distancing, masks were made compulsory, large gathering was avoided and plane and train travel was too curtailed but economic activity didn’t halt in these cities. The factories in these areas worked overtime and produced the necessary good that the world required in these hard times and also earned the green bucks for their Government and their people.

So I would beg to our planners and the authorities to see that merely lockdown is not the solution to containment alone. Perhaps we are missing something larger and bigger, in this fright to be safe from Carona, lest, we will fall sick to the malaise of the economic morass that will endanger millions again whom we have lifted from poverty after years of hard work back to a life of deprivation and squalor and may take many more years for them to regain their structure back in society. Now is the time not to be passionate fools and think that we will save millions of lives from certain death and yet drive these very same people to the squalor of abject poverty. That life too is a painful death for millions of our deprived brethren.

Rather I request the Government to have a graded response and chalk out a clear strategy based on the information in real-time and strategize them accordingly.

On one hand, is the procurement strategy of having the required no of manpower of health workers in the frontline in this war and the required no. of doctors and nurses which I believe our agencies are capable of planning this to the district level by our state and local and municipal levels.

The second is the requirement of medical supplies like masks. PPE,  Hazmat suits, medicines, etc and their reach to every nook and corner of this country and this is being scaled up to the required proportion and luckily we are ahead of the graph and the people hospitalized in this aren’t so overwhelming as in the US, Spain or Italy.

The third strategy to start random testing in the community to check the pattern, because there are every sign of community spread emerging due to the misadventure by a few misguided religious elements. So we must scale up random testing by 2 to 3 times the present rate so we can understand the emerging pattern in this disease and identify the new hotspots in the country.

So far the containment strategy has worked and the cases are being doubled every 4 days but we have to get it back to the earlier 7 days’ rate which was more manageable. For that strict containment of the new hotspots have to be taken with quarantines and sanitation of the affected areas. A strict vigil has to be maintained by the authorities for quarantine of these affected hotspots.

The authorities have to think in terms of gradual lifting of the lockdown, in the areas not at all affected by the coronavirus and then scale up the lifting gradually while maintaining strict social distancing norms. The mass gatherings like cinemas, stadiums, malls will have to bear the brunt of this lockdown for still a long time and the general public may not want to frequent them fully till the fears of this virus dies down. The Government will have to be strict on the mass transport systems like the local trains and the bus system in Metros, which carry the risk of being potential carriers of this coronavirus.

So a gradual lifting from this lockdown is proposed in a graded and well-timed manner taking the local intelligence with real-time data to expedite or reverse any decision within a day of its implementation in case there is a flare-up. We are living in unusual times and unusual circumstances call for unusual solutions. And remember in the tough times it brings the best in you and your character that shines through.