E-Paper
Covid-19: Five reasons you must stay home during lockdown
Stepping out results in contamination of surfaces or objects, from where it can infect people who touch the surface and then touch their own mouth, nose, or eyes.
Virus spreads though contact
The virus spreads between people in close contact (within 6 feet) through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes. But the infection can spread before people develop symptoms, which, on an average, take around five days to appear. Some people develop no symptoms and others have mild disease but still infect others. Stepping out also results in contamination of surfaces or objects, from where it can infect people who touch the surface and then touch their own mouth, nose, or eyes. The virus spreads very easily in areas where there is community transmission of the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in US.
Infection may occur without close contact
Scientists have documented a cluster of cases among people who worked in shops, visitors or were staff of a mall without direct contact with an infected person, according to a research document called “Indirect Virus Transmission in Cluster of Covid-19 Cases, Wenzhou” in China published by the CDC on March 12. Indirect transmission may have happened among these unrelated cases from spread via surfaces like elevator buttons or restroom taps, said the paper. For case-patients who were customers in the shopping mall but did not report using the restroom, the source of infection could have been the elevators or asymptomatic patients.
Lockdown greatly reduces transmission
A recent study by the Imperial College London’s Covid-19 team found that population-wide social distancing would have the largest impact in transmission reduction; and, in combination with other interventions, such as home isolation of infected people and closure of schools and universities. There are many more scientific studies that prove massive social distancing measures can stabilise transmission and give governments time to prepare for a spurt in infections.
Lockdown helped China control the pandemic
China enforced similar lockdowns in phases with far more stringency for over two months. Along with massive lockdowns, electronic surveillance was used in China to track people’s movements. Some 760 million people, roughly half the country’s population, were confined to their homes. A World Health Organization report recently concluded that the cordon sanitaire (restriction on movement of people) around Wuhan and neighbouring municipalities effectively ended infected people travelling to the rest of the country. The team noted a steep decline in new infections because of the lockdown. China’s model has been replicated in Italy, in the US’ New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain and other European countries. They have all ordered people to stay at home, threatening them with fines in some cases.
Lockdown helps governments track and trace
To contain spread, governments must identify infected cases and isolate them and their close contacts before they step out and infect many others in the community, as it happened in the case of the Sikh granthi who travelled to around 20 villages and put a large number of people at risk of infection before he was diagnosed with the Covid-19. Tracking and quarantining is done through continuous surveillance, which is possible during a lockdown. The lockdown also prevents undiagnosed infected people from travelling and further spreading the infection. The government can also use this time to build health infrastructure, source ventilators, medicines and personal protection equipment like masks and gloves for healthcare workers, train healthcare workers in treatment and infection-control, and accelerate vaccine and diagnostic development for Covid-19 patients.
