Can a Lockdown eliminate Coronavirus in a country?

What all do we know about the virus?

1. It has a high reproductive rate.

2. It has a low mortality rate.

3. It is capable of mutating.

4. We might not get a vaccine in the near future.

Can a Lockdown eradicate the virus in your country?

The short answer to this question is that it might act as an ancillary support in the fight against coronavirus, but in itself isn’t sufficient for the purpose of eradication of the pandemic. For a country which is as sparsely populated as New Zealand, it is relatively easy to fight against the virus with ‘an explicit elimination strategy’ and an adequate amount of resources. However, for a country like India, which is densely populated and has a relatively lower literacy rate and economic disparity, it is much more difficult to eliminate the virus through a lockdown. As of today, New Zealand has stopped social distancing while India struggles to experience a downfall in the number of cases.

Mike Ryan, the Executive Director of WHO has stated, "You must have a system to find cases, you must test, you must expand your capacity to treat and isolate, you must be able to quarantine your contacts." He further added, Without implementing the necessary measures, without putting in place those protections, it's going to be very difficult for the country to exit [from the lockdown]. And when they do, they have a resurgence and I think that’s the challenge now.”

Why does a country like India have a Lockdown if it is ineffective?

Lockdowns are put in place in order to prevent an exponential increase in the number of patients and to delay the transmission of the virus so that the country does not run short in terms of medical resources and healthcare workers. 1 hospital bed is available for 1,826 people while 1 isolation bed is available for every 86,000 people in India. Thus, it is practically impossible for the country to be able to sustainably handle the situation in case a large fraction of the population is infected at the same time. It has also been observed that the lockdown has been responsible for increasing the immunity of people to be able to fight against the disease.

How will the virus come to an end in a country like India?

In my personal opinion, the virus is here to stay for a very long term. Every virus ultimately obeys the phenomenon of ‘normal distribution’. We know that it has a high reproductive rate, which means that once countries do not have a choice but to unlock themselves due to severe economic dents, it will spread rapidly. The transmission will be proportional to the population density of the country, which means that once you start using public transport, you will come in contact with a coronavirus carrier and it is unarguable that you will be a recipient of the virus. The virus will propagate rapidly for the next two years until the 2/3rd population of the particular demographic in the severely affected countries is introduced to the virus and develops immunity against it. This means that there are very high chances that you will be infected with coronavirus in the next two years.

Should you be worried about that?

For a country like India which has the world’s highest population of youth (242 million), the low mortality rate tells us that India will cope with the pandemic in the absence of the lockdown. However, it was imperative for China to restrict and eradicate the virus at the earliest because more than 17.3% of their total population is older than 65 years of age who have more chances of succumbing to Covid-19. That being said, this theory is likely to change drastically in case the vaccine arrives early, which is very unpredictable.