The Corona Virus has become a threat to people’s lives. Prepare a speech to be delivered in the morning assembly, advising the students about the necessary steps and precautionary measures to be followed to ward off this evil. You are Pawan / Parinita Chowdhury of Class VII. Write the speech in about 100 words.
Answers
Answer:
It is important to note that countries that have so far done a relatively good job of containing the coronavirus pandemic have refrained from imposing a complete, nation-wide, curfew-like lockdown. These include Singapore, Taiwan, Germany, and Turkey. Even China, where it all started, placed only the Hubei province under complete lockdown, not the whole country.
But Prime Minister Narendra Modi has put 1.3 billion people under a curfew-like lockdown. Since the authorities are using the word ‘curfew’ in the context of issuing passes, it is fair to call it a national curfew.
A national curfew for 21 days will definitely go a long way in reducing the transmission of the deadly virus. But what happens after 21 days? The virus won’t disappear after that. Not until we get a vaccine, and it will take at least a few months to vaccinate every Indian even after a vaccine has been developed. A few months is a very optimistic estimate. In other words, we are in this mess for years.
Like these other countries, India could also have avoided the need for a national lockdown had it done what those countries are doing: testing, testing, testing.
India’s 21-day national lockdown should thus be seen as buying time to create a massive testing infrastructure, so that even asymptomatic people could be tested and quarantined. That’s the only way to manage the coronavirus pandemic until we get drugs and vaccines to administer en masse.
Sadly, Narendra Modi’s two national addresses have done little to address this concern about India not taking the mass-testing approach. We need fast testing, cheap testing, easily available testing — and a well laid out mechanism to quarantine a person the moment she is found positive, without letting her infect others, including medical staff and family members.
You have to be really naive to believe India’s official numbers of coronavirus patients — and then there are those who have died of sudden pneumonia without being tested or counted as coronavirus deaths.
The lack of widespread testing, as well as the lack of PPEs (personal protective equipment) for doctors, is a scandal. These 21 days are Modi’s last chance to fix these two problems. The responsibility is his more than anyone else’s, but state governments will also be put to test.
Sadly, the evidence so far suggests that the Modi government does not have the capacity to think through the details of planning and execution. This is turning out to be another demonetisation, with the typical Modi problem of mistaking theatrics for achievement.
The deliverable is not how many people clanged pots and pans or how many obediently followed Modi’s advice of staying indoors. The deliverable is how many people got tested, how many doctors have protective gear, how many ventilators the government managed to manufacture or buy overnight. Another deliverable is isolation centres, temporary hospitals in indoor stadia and quarantine facilities that are fit for human beings.