No room for ‘trial and error’ exercise

18.04.2020

Even as the countdown for the easing of lockdown started, flaws in the guidelines have begun to surface. A case in point is the dramatic overnight change in the status of Suryapet district. Barely 24 hours after the Union government let it be known that the district was in the orange list, 16 new corona positive cases were reported on Thursday, taking the total number of positive cases in the district to 39. This should certainly push the district into the red zone. The moot point is that this kind of situation may well occur anywhere after easing of the lockdown. How does the administration handle these kind of situations where change occurs overnight and drastically at that.

Then there is this case of a Markaz returnee in Karimnagar, who tested negative for the virus on two earlier occasions. Just as the district officials were beginning to breathe easy after the town, often referred to as the ‘ground zero’ of coronavirus in Telangana State, did not report any positive case in the past 10 days, came the dampener that this person had tested positive, after 29 long days.

These are not isolated incidents and even more importantly, not the only indicators that suggest an easing of lockdown could be a bad idea at this juncture. Several nations are already paying the price for hasty decisions to lift the lockdown, and have been forced to clamp down even more sternly after witnessing a sudden and steep rise in corona positive cases during the ease out period.

The sheer magnitude of the problem and the ruthlessness with which the virus had unleashed attacks on nations across the globe leave little room for any ‘trial and error’ exercises. Prudence would be in continuing with the lockdown at least till May 3, and then take an informed call after taking stock of the situation rather than experiment with easing that may well lead to indefinite lockdown should the situation not work out to the desired scenario.

As Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao has often said, the one factor that should be paramount in decision-making should be protection of people’s lives. Economy can be revived and rebuilt, however long and painful the path maybe, but then people’s lives can’t be brought back. Should we allow all the good work done in the past four weeks to be undone with just one stroke is the million dollar question?