People feel short term lockdowns have no impact on COVID-19 spread; 68% people give it thumbs down in survey

The announcement by the UP govt of a weekend lockdown starting from Friday night to early Monday morning has also drawn criticism from experts and even political parties

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NH Correspondent/Lucknow

The announcement by the Uttar Pradesh Government of a weekend lockdown starting from Friday night to early Monday morning has drawn criticism from experts and even political parties, with Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi calling it ‘ineffective’. Further, as per a survey, 68 % people said this weekend lockdown will have no or minor impact on the spread of COVID-19.

LocalCircles conducted a survey to get citizens' perspective on what they feel about such weekend lockdowns. The survey received over 16,000 votes. The first question asked was if they believed such lockdowns are useful in containing the spread of COVID-19. Around 28% respondents said yes and the impact is good and 24 % said yes but the impact is minor, while 44 per cent said no, they are meaningless. 4 % did not have an opinion.

“This means that 68% of citizens believe weekend lockdowns have negligible or minor impact on containing spread of COVID-19,” said the survey whose findings were released early this week.

The Uttar Pradesh Government, which announced a 2-day ‘weekend lockdown’, says it was an attempt to contain the steadily rising cases of COVID-19 in the state. Experts are calling it a hasty move whereas the state says it wants to restrict non-essential movement that increases over weekends and ensure the successful screening of every household in the state.

According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) report last week, 49 districts now contribute to 80% of India's COVID-19 spread.

In the next question, citizens were asked how these 49 districts should be managed to contain COVID-19. In response, 46 % said a complete lockdown should be implemented for 3 weeks or more (home delivery of essentials and all activities closed), while 23 % said a lockdown should be implemented like it was done between March 25th -May 3rd. Only 9 % said weekend lockdowns should be implemented for the next 3 months while 13% said no action was needed and the government should just continue with Unlock 2.0.


“This means that 69% citizens feel a stringent lockdown in 49 districts which have India’s 80% case load is needed to contain the spread of COVID-19,” the survey said.

Chennai had implemented a complete lockdown from June 19th – July 5th. For Chennai, the number of cases have reduced by almost 50% from the 2400-2500 per day range in the 3rd week of June to 1200 in the 2nd week of July. In the Chennai lockdown, essential services were functioning and according to some LocalCircles members in Chennai, the impact would have been even higher had Chennai shut shops for essential services and operated a home delivery model for essentials.

Several cities and districts of Maharashtra have announced a similar 10 day lockdown and some LocalCircles members from Pune have already given it a thumbs up. While many businesses are opposed to the idea of lockdown, citizens are clear that it is critical to breaking the chain of COVID-19 spread. Some other businesses also stated that instead of 20-30% business volumes because of much lower footfalls in the market, it is better to shut things for a 3-4 week period and restart activity at a higher scale when people are not as fearful to step out.

In summary, given that India has experienced rise of cases by 600% from 4000 during the second week of May and end of Lockdown 3.0 to approximately 28,000 during the 2nd week of July, status quo is clearly not an option. This is why people continue to believe that unless the spread of COVID-19 is contained in these high load districts, India will soon surpass US in terms of daily cases and become the most impacted country in the world from COVID-19.

“Over two thirds of the citizens in the survey believe that these weekend lockdowns have no or little effect and instead a targeted 3-4 week lockdown in all districts that make up 80% of India’s case load is the best way forward,” the survey said.


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