Lift the lockdown for people’s welfare, peak is yet to come: Scientists

With India expected to breach 100,000 active COVID-19 cases in another ten days, researchers tracking the pandemic are in the favour of lifting the lockdown for the benefit of the people as the epidemic’s peak is at least a couple of months away.

“From epidemiology principles, epidemic in India will peak when 414 to 552 million people are cumulatively infected and that is anticipated between the first week of July and mid-August 2020,” T Jacob John, one of India’s leading experts and a retired professor of clinical virology in Christian Medical College Vellore told DH.

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Several other scientists operating disease prediction models concur that India is yet to see the COVID-19 peak. But they also point out that the success in implementing the intervention will determine when the peak would come.

“We would only know when we are on the other, declining side of the peak of active coronavirus cases! The more inefficient our intervention measures are the higher and more delayed the peak might be,” said Dibyendu Nandi, a scientist at the Indian Institute of Science, Education, and Research, Kolkata who runs one such model.

The numbers would rise. “I do a projection of active cases till May 25 - but I suspect that after May 20 (by which time we should have about 80,000 active cases) we will start to see a deviation resulting from the easing of the lockdown. If the present trend continues after that I expect to see the active number of cases crossing 100,000 by May 24,” noted Sitabhra Sinha, a professor at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, who too carry out modelling studies on COVID-19 in India.

The simulations produced by Sinha and his colleagues are on course so far. Earlier they had predicted nearly 60,000 active cases by May 17 when the third phase of the lockdown would end. Two days before the deadline, there are nearly 52,000 active cases.

“The lockdown helps keep down the rate, and prevents the health infrastructure from being overwhelmed (which has ensured that we haven't had a catastrophic situation like Italy) but it has not helped in bringing down R below 1 (a mark of the exponential growth of the epidemic). We cannot keep it on indefinitely,” Sinha said.

“Indefinite lockdown is like burning the house to kill the rat. There are other options. You can keep the house with the rat killed or driven out. Under no logic should lockdown be extended beyond May 17,” noted John.

“If fighting against coronavirus is for the benefit and welfare of the people, you cannot sacrifice the benefit and welfare of the people in the fight,” he added.