Hovering around 3.5 lakh daily infections, India’s current wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is still some distance from the peak. Some experts fear that it could hit a million daily infections in May, with daily deaths nearing 5,000. It is a different matter that the story these numbers tell is itself only a tiny fragment of the misery enveloping the country. The health-care infrastructure is stretched to breaking point in most parts of the country. Given this situation, more restrictions cannot be avoided. At the end of a week-long lockdown, Delhi extended it by another week on Sunday. After months, Chennai came under a complete Sunday lockdown with increased restrictions during the week; Kerala had the whole weekend in shutdown. A national lockdown was a sledgehammer approach last year and its memories still haunt. The Centre, once bitten and twice shy, has conveniently left any decision on lockdowns to the States. The learning from the first lockdown should not be that it is a political hot potato that is to be passed around; but that it could serve as a smart instrument in combating the outbreak.
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