A Strategic Plan for the Indian government to enforce Covid-19 lockdown, enable essential supply and cease the spread

The whole world is suffering through unfortunate times, a virus has breached into our lives and is causing more deaths than ever caused by a pandemic.

The whole world has been urged to maintain a social distance and has been enforced into a lockdown, a never before seen phenomena. Despite every measure taken by government organizations, three months since the outburst of the virus, the total number of cases and deaths seems to be radically increasing.

I have been reading and following up with the measures and protocols taken by the government of various countries and public organizations throughout the world before preparing this strategic plan to enforce COVID-19 lockdown and dead stop the spread.

Basics of How the Virus is Spreading

When an individual(let’s say X) who is infected with COVID-19 comes into contact with another individual (Y), Y becomes exposed and the probability of Y contracting the virus highly increases.
In the event that Y gets infected and is not isolated from the general public, the possibility of transmission of virus from Y to numerous others becomes evident.

Contact Tracing & Social Distancing

There is a concept called contact tracing where the health officials are trying to trace every individual contact made by COVID-19 infected patients to quarantine the possible cases. Now, this sounds quite simple to track for a single individual, but try imagining for patients through an entire city or even a small district. It becomes quite messy for urban areas to adopt this methodology.

The Social distancing has been a proposed solution to control the spread of the virus and in addition, sanitized/safe exchange/handing over of commodities can be implemented nation wide which is currently limited to red zones only.

Concept

It is necessary to ensure that people get food and basic necessities for survival without leaving their home, thus enabling social distancing and truly abiding by the lockdown.
The reason lockdown has been imposed is to stop the spread from a COVID-19 contracted individual to a healthy individual. The basis of the concept is not for people to get stuck in their homes without essentials, it is to enable and enforce a safe and secure lockdown with access to utilities, essentials and necessities without allowing the virus to spread further.

Though it is a herculean task, it needs to be done for the sake of humanity. Designing such a distribution plan requires a thorough understanding and implementation of fundamentals of supply chain management.
Once implemented and enforced effectively, after implementation phase 2(say 28 days), we will be able to claim that the virus is totally contained and there will not be any further spreading possible. Once we reach a stage where no new cases arise, we will be able to resume our lives in a full-fledged manner without any fear.

Implementation PHASE I (Preparation)

We are going to discuss the implementation of social distancing plan elaborately in a step by step manner which can be directly applied by the state and central governments. Since we are discussing it at the very core level, it can be adapted to scale as per requirements.

Team & Facilities Formation

1. Local facilitator

The job of the local facilitator, as the name suggests, is to facilitate. One school teacher from every village along with an administrator or one more teacher may be chosen.
S/he should be trained by an expert doctor (locally available in the area-health centre, nearby town etc.) as to “how to sanitize”, “wear mask”, “maintaining social distancing” and other safety precautions recommended by the WHO. To enable the facilitators, necessary items like mask, sanitizers etc has to be issued to them.

2. Village Administrative Officer(VAO)

Along with his subordinates, or local body administrator(LBA) along with his/her team in case of cities, who have a thorough understanding of 4 to 5 villages or local areas under their jurisdiction.

3. Administration

Local PDS system members can also be roped in for this. These teams can be helped by the Revenue Inspector, who can supported by respective Tahsildars and all Tahsildars can further be supervised by the District Collectors.

This is an already existing official hierarchy in place, hence the implementation of flow of work process would be fairly simple.

Concerned authorities may be chosen in cities accordingly.

4. Transportation

Food Distribution
There should be at least 20 trucks for every district for pick up and distribution of essentials and amenities.

One van or jeep for every panchayat may also be hired/used for some special services like medicine etc.

Six trucks/vans may be provided to each taluk for food service.

Medical Transportation
Five jeeps for every taluk to transport patients, as and when required.

Three ambulances for every taluk for those who are seriously ill or those suspected to have been infected with virus.

Migration of People
At least five buses (initially) for every district to pick up stranded people.

Fifty buses for the entire state (in accordance with number of districts) to pick up / drop stranded people. This may be required only for the first one or two weeks.

Three buses for each taluk along with driver and (at most) one mechanic from the Govt Local Transport Corporation (mechanic may be shifted according to the requirement) may be kept on stand-by for any special/emergency service.

Local private transport owners may also be requested to provide a number of buses along with drivers, if Govt owned buses are not sufficient. In cities, the plan can be adopted accordingly.

Implementation PHASE II

1. Relocating Migrants

In India, people from numerous villages migrate to cities for daily wage work. They do not have access to suitable houses, medical care or any other basic facilities for that matter. It is indeed the true sad reality but that being said government is responsible for the welfare of migrant workers, especially during the time of a pandemic.
The lack of plan for migrant workers and no border checks in place led to numerous workers hiking thousands of kilometres to their native towns. The contact tracing for such an event is unimaginable.

For stranded migrant workers, students and other people, they may be dropped by bus at the border of the state. A further bus service from the state can take them towards their destination. The bus should only operate with a maximum capacity of 10 to 15, ensuring sanitization and social distancing.

India has the fourth largest railway network in the world, what better time to utilize the railway facilities. In case of migrants stranded multiple borders away from their natives, the Indian railways (both national and local) can be utilized to help migrants.

Now, I understand there are multiple views when it comes to relocation of migrants due to possible risks of transmission. These strategies should only be utilized as per requirements by meticulously calculating risk potentials of alternative strategies.

I feel that it is important to transport migrant workers to their native states due to two reasons:
1. First is ofcourse the humanitarian reason, everyone should be at the comfort of their home during these unfortunate and difficult times. This is why Indian nationals in different countries were rescued by sending out planes to various countries and vice a versa was carried out by other countries as well.
2. The native states have official records of people, which would enable to use contact tracing and any other efforts to control the situation of the pandemic.

Details of migrants moving back to their natives should be maintained to enable contact tracing for future use. The enablement of relocation has been covered in transportation.

2. Food Distribution

A supply chain of vegetables, groceries and other essentials should be built through suppliers, distributors and vendors. The transportation of all these essentials should take place through a sanitization process before entering the borders of cities and villages.

At least 5 private hygienic hotels or school cafeterias per district with required facilities can be chosen for preparation of food to supply the nearest areas of a taluk through trucks /vans.
The prepared food will be utilized for serving elderly, homeless people and those who are unable to cook for themselves due to the lockdown.

VAO or LBA(cities) with the help of the local facilitator should ensure supply of essentials by distributing/selling to public on a one to one basis to ensure safety of public enforcing the social distancing.
The supply should be enough to last for 2 weeks for a household of 5. It must include wheat, pulses, legumes, salt, spices, sugar, tea leaves, vegetables, fruits, medicines, supplements and any other essentials.

Nothing should be handed over hand to hand. After placing the item, including currency(sanitized) at a specific spot, it should be picked up by the other party after proper sanitization.

3. Covid-19 Testing

The major task is the assembly of team and allocation of transportation. Once a supply chain has been setup, it can be utilized for food distribution, door to door testing for COVID-19, supply of medication etc.

Once the testing starts, people who test positive for the virus, can be relocated to hospitals using transportation setups in place. Due to complete lockdown and social distancing, the contact tracing would be minimal and easily identifiable.

Accessibility of one doctor in local dispensary or at their residence for 24x7 should be ensured.

Concerned medical stores and medicine suppliers can be coordinated with, for COVID-19 testing kits and other essential medicines for diabetes, thyroid, tuberculosis etc as per household requirements which can be distributed along with essentials.

4. Distribution Enforcement & Regulation

The enforcement of distribution has to be supervised and coordinated by the law enforcement to enable smooth flow of operations.

Police Force should provide local police to every panchayat on a shift basis to help in maintaining discipline in the activities. For cities , the same can be adapted accordingly.

None else, except the team pressed into service and involved in essential services should be allowed to move around for 28 days in order to eradicate the virus. Additional set of candidates may also be included as per requirement.

Our country has already witnessed a good number of service minded private sectors. There are service minded industrialists, actors etc who have donated generously. Only Coordination can assure success during these difficult times.

Further Thinking

This is an initiative and an outline towards enforcing social distancing and utilizing existing resources effectively to overcome the pandemic crisis.

If you roll back up a few months, no one could have imagined the situation we are in today. The grand scheme of plans and tactics cannot help us if they are not executed. A mere lockdown and an announcement of social distancing won’t help unless it is enforced diligently.
The opening of grocery shops, medical stores and even essential items without appropriate social distancing can prove dangerous to the general public and can lead to spread of COVID-19. With every passing day, the cases and the death toll are rapidly increasing due to COVID-19.
With the current tactics in place, it seems impossible to test people, segregate positive cases, trace back to probable cases. All this happening with various markets and shops opening, despite an announcement of complete lockdown, quite an irony.

India has an amazing government and organizational structure in place and it is very well capable of providing for the public with a real lockdown in place.

It is unimaginable yet controllable, if we act now.