As India ponders a shift towards zonal containment to let the economy function, we must work out a finely-calibrated plan of when and how to do this.
We can’t afford any error Like other countries battling the scourge of covid-19, India faces the daunting question of when and how the current lockdown is best lifted.
With only a week to go for the 21-day curfew to end, there are no easy answers. Neither can the pathogen be given a free run, nor can the economy be kept closed beyond a point.
Plans seem afoot to shift from an all-India closure to a strategy of “aggressive containment" of infections within clusters marked out on the country’s map, with people only in these kept under strict isolation (and buffer zones around them).