COVID-19: At least 427 million people go into lockdown in India

There are penalty provisions if one does not follow restrictions. Most of the states have announced restrictions according to the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897. One can be imprisoned for six months and / or a fined Rs 1,000 under the provisions of this Act. Indian Penal Code provisions and Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) can also be invoked.

Indian Council of Medical Research Director General Balarama Bhargav projected lockdown as the key to tackling the situation. “Nationwide lockdown is the most essential thing for breaking the chain of transmission of virus in the country,” he said twice in the March 22 presser.

In the same vein, health ministry officials and Bhargav dismissed that there was any instance of community transmission in India despite the fact that there existed at least five cases whose source of transmission could not be linked to international travel or contact history.

While experts are divided over efficiency of lockdown as they have significant impact on various sectors and marginalised people, World Health Organization has given the idea of indiscriminate lockdown a thumbs down.

In an interview to the BBC on March 22, WHO’s emergency programme director Mike Ryan said countries simply could not lock down societies without ensuring proportional public health measures. He said, “The danger right now with the lockdowns ... if we don’t put in place the strong public health measures now, when those movement restrictions and lockdowns are lifted, the danger is the disease will jump back up.”

Are we doing enough?

Bhargav said India was doing enough on the testing front. He said the UK, France, the United States, Germany, Italy and South Korea were testing 16,000, 10,000, 26,000, 42,000, 52,000, and 80,000 samples per week. India is capable of testing 50,000 samples per week. But how many are we actually testing? “5,000 per week,” he replied to a query.

Government officials said instead of isolating a few beds in different hospitals for COVID-19 patients, they would be earmarking one or more hospitals in entirety in various districts depending on their population size. Agarwal said there were enough ventilators, personnel protective equipment (PPEs) for doctors and other necessary things for the management of the pandemic. He however, refused to provide their numbers and said, “The Centre has placed an order of 1,200 ventilators already.”

The ministry officials said it was the job of states to procure this equipment. The Centre would provide only additional support.

The states can use National Rural Health Mission funds or state disaster response funds. He, yet again, refused to say as to what the strength of current isolation beds, PPEs and ventilators was, saying all of them were in sufficient number.

Agarwal, however, tended to allay fears over daily wagers and the poor being affected due to lockdowns. He said state governments and central ministries had been approached to do their bit in this regard.