India extends lockdown period till May 3 as it becomes more evident that the only way to fight the coronavirus is to stop its spread. More than 1,26,000 people world wide have died due to the corona epidemic. While in India, the death toll from this virus has crossed 350. This fight against the coronavirus is a big challenge for a country like India. The analysis was done by Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary in DNA, the world's most-watched news show.
Around 700 years ago, an epidemic called 'Black Death' had spread and had claimed the lives of as many as 7 to 200 million people all over the world. The Black Death epidemic began to spread from mice onboard ships. When the ships arrived in Italy, the crew would be kept in isolation for 40 days before being allowed to go home. One of the waays to fight the epidemic was isolation. It was during this time the process of quarantine was used and has come to prevail.
Since there is no cure for the coronavirus and we are still some time away from finding a vaccine, it has been established that lockdown and social distancing are the only measures against this deadly virus.
There is only one way to fight coronavirus and that is to prevent it from spreading. But by the time a country becomes active to fight coronavirus the cases of infection increases rapidly. This is how the COVID-19 spread in India.
It took 44 days to reach 100 positive cases. After this, in 10 days the cases crossed 500. In the next 5 days, coronavirus infections crossed 1 thousand. In the next 10 days, more than 5000 cases occurred. After that it took just 5 days to reach 5 thousand to 10 thousand. But with the complete lockdown of 21 days, India has reduced the speed of Corona. This is because if we compare India with the countries most affected by Corona, then we are in a much better position.
While it took 75 days for 10,000 infection cases in India, in the US, the COVID-19 cases crossed 10,000 in just 57 days. There were more than 10,000 cases in Italy in just 39 days. The number of infections exceeded 10,000 in 45 days in Spain, 51 days in Germany and 55 days in France.
We are told you that if there was no lockdown in India, by now there would have been more than 8 lakh COVID-19 patients in the country. Without the lockdown restrictions, if coronavirus continues to infect with the same speed in India, then by April 30, there will be more than 58 thousand positive cases. If lockdown were completely removed, coronavirus cases could reach 20 million, and the hard work of the entire country would have gone in vain. That is why PM Modi decided to extend lockdown by May 3. But the challenge is also how to run life along with saving life. Because in the coronavirus crisis the economy is being estimated to be a big loss.
According to the British company Barclays, the Indian economy has lost about Rs 9 lakh crore in the 3-week lockdown. The total lockdown till May 3 would result in a total loss of Rs 18 lakh crore. According to the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), the Indian economy cannot tolerate lockdown for long. The unemployment rate in India reached 23.8 per cent in the week of March 29, according to data from the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy.
According to the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), 2 crore jobs will be lost in the tourism sector alone. 9 million jobs will be lost from textiles and other small industries. One million jobs can be lost from the automobile industry. Aviation industry threatens 6 lakh jobs. About 14 crore people in India's 47 crore employees and laborers.
India faces a big challenege as it is a country with a huge population and limited resources for such a population. The country's health system is also not very strong. Nevertheless we have won the initial battle against the coronavirus by our restraint and determination.
