India and COVID-19
Registering a new high in the number of daily cases detected, India has overtaken Spain to become the country with the fifth-highest confirmed COVID 19 infections. Cases have steadily risen, doubling every 17 days, among the fastest in countries with the most infections. It seems that we are slowly moving towards a gradual removal of the lockdown for some sectors parts of the economy. The government doesn’t have any other alternative other than focus on lives and livelihoods. The biggest challenge businesses will face will be restarting their operations. Even while a larger part of the enabling ecosystem continues to be in lockdown. We are going to have to really go through a series of steps to ensure that we are complying with those government guidelines, but at the same time, ensuring that our people are safe, and are able to be active as well.
Companies should ensure transportation for their workers. At the offices there should be a series of checkpoints testing that can be done. There should be holding areas for colleagues to ensure that a red flag can be raised if someone’s feeling unwell.
We have to ensure there is no crowding in our office spaces, ensure that only 25 or 50% of the workspace is actually occupied.to curb the growing panic and to distribute viable information, the government provides authentic information on the virus, its spread, preventions, guidelines, helpline numbers, registered cases, death tools, etc. on the Ministry of Health’s official website.
The government has designated 72 centers across the country for the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19. As per the WHO estimate, there should be 3 beds/1,000 people while India has only 0.7 beds/1,000 people. Thus, to provide for more isolation wards, the government converted 20,000+ railway coaches into isolation stations. Meanwhile, the center has also ramped up steps to develop a vaccine for the pandemic.
Proper sanitization of public places should be done on a daily basis. Proper arrangement of a mask and social distancing should be watched by the govt.
On the other hand, the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) undertook emergency measures cutting various interest rates to a record low to increase liquidity in the economy by over Rs. 3.7 lakh crores. It also ordered a 3-month EMI moratorium from banks and financial institutions such as Tata Capital, as well as provided relief for taxpayers by deferring the ITR and GST filing dates until June 2020. Moreover, to help low-income households, migrant workers and daily wage labourers cope with the situation, the government has issued relief packages (worth Rs. 1.7 lakh crores for food and direct cash transfers), opened shelter homes, and other securities.
The Indian government is leaving no stone unturned in battling coronavirus. However, whether or not the Government has successfully contained the spread of COVID-19 in the country, only statistics can tell.
