Pages

Monday 6 April 2020

Lockdown in India must be extended to 49 days to curb spread of COVID-19 coronavirus: Study

A research conducted by R Adhikari and Rajesh Singh from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in the University of Cambridge has claimed that the 21-day lockdown will not be enough to contain the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus in India amd the lockdown must be extended to 49 days.

A research conducted by R Adhikari and Rajesh Singh from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in the University of Cambridge has claimed that the 21-day lockdown will not be enough to contain the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus in India amd the lockdown must be extended to 49 days.
 
Conditions:
- Study is based on the interpretation that the lockdown on March 25, removed all social contacts and confined everyone to their homes.
- They also acknowledged that this appears to be an "optimistic" interpretation but that it allows them to assess the outcome.
Different scenarios:
Singh and Adhikari took into account four different scenarios which are explained below:
First scenario
The first scenario is the current 21-day lockdown. While it reduces the rate of infectives, it does not do much when it comes to reducing their number in order to prevent a resurgence. In this scenario, they found that the probability of a resurgence after the lockdown is pretty high.
Second scenario
In the second scenario, where the 21-day lockdown is followed by a relaxation of 5 days and is followed immediately by another lockdown of 28 days, the researchers found that here also the number of infected do not go down enough to prevent a resurgence.
Third scenario 
Scenario three looks at three lockdowns. The first 21-day lockdown is followed by a lockdown of 28 days, which is followed by a lockdown of 18 days. These three lockdowns are separated by 5-day relaxation periods. Singh and Adhikari said, "This brings the number of infective below 10 where explicit contact tracing folltowed by quarantine may be successful in preventing a resurgence."
Fourth scenario
Scenario four that appears to be the most optimum advocates for one 49-day long lockdown. It also brings down the number of infectives below 10.
India is currently under a 21-day lockdown which was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 24 asking people to restrain for going out of their homes and maintain social distancing in order to curb the spread of coronavirus.

No comments:

Post a Comment