Slow rise of COVID-19 cases in India can be attributed to lockdown

Sir,
     Social distancing has never been discussed before as we do today. Queues in front of shops are arranged in such a manner that there is a space of at least one meter between one another. We are desperate for relief from this lockdown but what we see is the gradual increase of Covid-19 cases in India and all around the world. Given this situation, one may wonder if the lockdown strategy is really helping. In fact, the nation-wide lockdown has attributed to the slow rate of the rise of Covid-19 in India.
    Yet, some concerned people have voiced that the Covid-19 cases in India are low when compared to other nations only because India did not carry out mass testing of the public unlike in some European nations. In Italy and a few other western countries, medical check-ups of the whole residents/visitors of the locality where a Covid-19 patient has stayed were undertaken. For it is impossible to count the actual numbers of people whom a Covid-19 might have met or get acquainted with.
    I pray India does not meet the same fate as those of Italy, France or Spain, and now the USA. Unlike US citizens, Indians are fortunate to have leaders who are quick to understand and accept the gravity of the situation. As compared to the developed western countries, India has a shortage of essential medical equipment, from protective gears to testing apparatus to emergency kits. From day one itself, we witness complaints of the lack of protective gears for health workers and suspected Covid-19 patients, the dearth of essential commodities in quarantined facilities, unhygienic conditions of medical places and the list goes on. So far, India has not come up with a special facility or centre practically built or reserved for Covid-19 victims as done in China.
    Unfortunately, India is popularized by its citizens for whom social discipline is “someone else’s duty and not mine”. That mentality has been time and again evident from the current lockdown period wherein the police had to resort to violent means to enforce the lockdown; to some police, an ‘excuse’ to show their ‘power’ in public. We really can’t blame them.
    Now, here is the conundrum. During this period of lockdown, our patience continually undergoes a litmus test. Before the allotted time expires for the day, we stand in queues in front of shops to buy our needs with spaces between each of us. The ironic part is, moments before we stood in queues, we had literary ‘jostled’ around to be at the front of the queue. There was no ‘social distancing’ then. Again, when we came out of our houses to buy essential commodities, we ‘swarmed’ the roads.
This piece doesn’t promote pessimism. But, what if, I mean ‘what if’ one of us happens to the Covid-19 carrier? The government must include mass testing of people sharing the localities of Covid-19 patients, as an option.  At this rate, we might even edge out the US in terms of Corona virus cases soon.
Pr Shyleyn Chothe
Purum Tampak Village, Chandel