15-day lockdown must to break deadly chain of transmission: Experts

New Delhi: As India witnesses an unprecedented surge in Covid caseloads, voices for a short-duration national lockdown or in severely-hit states/UTs grew louder on Wednesday and experts urged the Centre to immediately plan and execute a 15-day lockdown to break the chain of infection and manage the second wave of the pandemic.

The fact is that when India went into a 21-day national lockdown in March last year, the total number of active Covid cases was a mere over 500.

The lockdown then failed to stop the surge as the first wave happened after that period and devastated businesses and normal life.

This time, as India reported 1,84,372 new Covid-19 cases, setting another grim one-day record and taking the overall tally to 13,87,825 on Wednesday, a short-duration lockdown is what is the need of the hour to stop the menace, experts told IANS.

“As the hospital services are up to the brim and more and more people are dying, vaccination has also been halted because of lack of access at many centres. This is an emergency situation for a shorter national lockdown,” Dr Rahul Bhargava, Director, Department of Clinical Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplant, Fortis Hospital, stressed.

“This way, we will be able to break the virus chain and get a breather to vaccinate more and more people as hospitals services will be back on track,” Bhargava said.