As India is going through ’21 days lockdown‘ researchers have said that it’s not enough to contain COVID-19. The study by Cambridge researchers says that a 21-day lockdown is a bare minimum. A 21-day lockdown has been termed as the first in the phase.
2- days lockdown can reduces the rate of infectives, it does not do much when it comes to reducing their number say, researchers. The researchers say that a 49-day lockdown is what a nation like India needs. The Hubei in China which was the center of the COVID-19 outbreak had a lockdown for over 2 months. It was only eased on 25th March.
The study by Cambridge is based on the interpretation that the present lockdown, removed all social contacts and confined everyone to their homes. The researchers also acknowledged that this appears to be an “optimistic” interpretation but that it allows them to assess the outcome.
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R Adhikari and Rajesh Singh from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in the University of Cambridge have proposed 4 models for India. These lockdown models are:
- End of lockdown after 21 days. In this case, the probability of a resurgence after the lockdown is pretty high.
- 21-day lockdown is followed by a relaxation of 5 days. Following this up immediately with another lockdown of 28 days. In this case, also the number of infected does not go down enough to prevent a resurgence.
- 21 days lockdown followed by 28 days followed by 18 days with 5 days gap in between them. In this case number of infective would come below 10 with explicit contact tracing followed by quarantine may be successful in preventing a resurgence.
- Straight 49 days lockdown. That is continuing for another 28 days after 14th April. This would bring down the number of infectives below 10.
“Our principal conclusion is that the three-week lockdown will be insufficient. Our model suggests sustained periods of lockdown with periodic relaxation will reduce the number of cases to levels where individualized social contact tracing and quarantine may become feasible”, said researchers.
