COVID 19, Containment, Life, Work and Restart

COVID-19 manifests as a viral respiratory disease that first was imported from Wuhan, Peoples Republic of China and then it spreads from human to human when they come in to contact everywhere in every continent. The response has been national and state governance with cooperation from the local government based on disaster management laws. The public health system became the frontline Corona Warriors and was respected by all for their services, but the system capacity was evaluated for its capability to have an unusually substantial number of patients. Many disciplines jointly must contribute a knowledge-based solution based on time-series data on infected, recovered and died as well as more reliable serum tests. When a nation declares one peak has reached the local data shows it has not and so local governance shall be the effective measure based on local data for COVID-19 governance. This book concentrates on local governance for COVID-19. This book believes that COVID-19 cannot be eliminated like smallpox or polio. It can appear and disappear seasonally like common cough and cold, with never-ending mutation of the virus, but it can cause deaths even after we had full vaccinations. The public health systems came out with preventive culture such as wearing masks, practising social distancing, washing hands with disinfectants etc. to combat this virus. The police were deployed to implement preventive measures enumerated above. In this process, both police and public health workers got infected and can even threaten the entire population with more deaths and collapse of the public health system. This book advocates concentrating on urban centres for COVID-19 because of high population density and public realms where the danger of COVID-19 spread from human contact is maximum. The use of humans for data collection and management involving surveys and analysis, policing and intervention of public health persons are all risky prepositions for the individuals involved. This book concentrates on the public realm for work and living and finds an alternate solution that can automate COVID-19 prevention methods with less human involvement. This book gives more importance to local governance based on local data and the use of tools available for local governance such as Master Plans, Zonal Plans, Public realm management using ICT-IoT systems, E-Democracy and E-government. These require modifications to the existing body of knowledge based on COVID-19 prevention capabilities. Hence zonal plans may get modified and non-human control of the public realm may be institutionalized. This chapter brings together the state of knowledge on all these discussed and the rest of the chapters use many of them to demonstrate locally based solutions based on locally generated data.

COVID-19 pandemic hit the world bringing socio-economic and cultural shutdown of activities. The curse was a blessing to the environment in terms of significant air quality improvements. The study uses geospatial technology for assessing the reduction in nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) levels and aerosol optical depth (AOD) levels using satellite-based (Sentinel-5P TROPOMI and MODIS data, respectively) and ground-based (Central Pollution Control Board, etc.) observations of 2019 and 2020. The study examines the lockdown period-wise reductions in ambient air pollution in the Delhi Region- the capital of India. It was investigated that satellite observations recorded a reduction of 51% in NO₂ during lockdown phase-1 as compared to the pre-lockdown phase in 2020. When compared with 2019, the maximum reduction of 66.5% was seen in the lockdown phase-1, with p < 0.001. The ground-based stations also showed a 61% reduction in daily NO₂ during lockdown phase-1 and phase-2 as compared to 2019. There is a drop in AOD by 55, 24 and 30% in lockdown phase-1, lockdown phase-2 and lockdown phase-3 w.r.t. pre-lockdown phases. However, an increase of 30% is observed during the post-lockdown phase of 2020 w.r.t. pre-lockdown phase. Ground-based stations ascertained that the reduction of 66, 60, 53 and 14% was observed in 2020 in the lockdown phases 1, 2 and 3 and post-lockdown phase w.r.t. pre-lockdown phase of 2020. Additionally, there is a 14, 56, 41, 39 and 3% reduction during the pre-lockdown, lockdown 1, lockdown 2, lockdown 3 and post-lockdown phase of 2020 w.r.t. similar periods of 2019. It was highlighted that environmental degradation can be mitigated with such stringent measures by policymakers from time to time to protect the deteriorating environment.

Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) is one of the most densely populated regions of India and the COVID situation has tested the efficacy of its health infrastructure as well as its administrative management. This chapter primarily compares the extent of the pandemic in terms of the new cases and casualties in the nine municipal corporations of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region with respect to their demography and density. It studies the means and modalities adopted by each of these Corporations, with respect to health care, isolation and vaccination to understand the management strategies adopted in the hour of need to effectively tackle the rising number of patients while providing them isolation and required medical support; while testing, tracking and treating their families and neighbours at the same time. It documents the common measures undertaken by a majority of them, as also the unique and isolated measures specific to some of them. The formation of war rooms, decentralization at the ward level and effective testing, tracing and tracking proved to be the keystones that enabled the municipal corporations to contain the spread and fatalities in the region, owing to the pandemic.

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are reflected in almost all aspects of life irrespective of the efforts taken to bring down the spread of infectious disease. This prompts a need to analyse the efforts and rectify the shortcomings. The major strategy of restricting the movement of people through lockdowns was adopted in all the countries around the world in varying intensities at different times. The plans and guidelines have differed according to the region and characteristics of the population. Since the nature of the disease showed fast diffusion and difficulty in identifying symptoms, mass restrictions were implemented in the quickest way possible. Such restrictions are brought to an entire geographical area causing panic and distress among the residents. This also restricts the people with no significant risk of spreading the disease and affects their daily lives unnecessarily. Thus the criteria for fixing Containment Zones become instrumental in causing minimum damage to the daily lives of the residents. The case of the Southern State of India called Kerala is taken to analyse the containment strategies implemented. The World Health Organization recommends the Containment Zone to be influenced by known movements and geographical distribution of cases and contacts, important local or national administrative boundaries, infrastructure, and essential services. Whereas the Indian Government suggested factors like mapping of cases and contacts, geographical dispersion of cases and contacts, well-demarcated perimeter, and enforceability to be considered while fixing the extent of Containment Zones. The Government of Kerala having taken the traditional and easy way of taking administrative boundaries as the extent of the Containment Zone based on the number of positive cases later moved on to Test Positivity Rate (TPR) as the criteria for finding risky zones. After heavy backlash against the criteria of TPR, a new metric of Weekly Infection Population Ratio was introduced by the Government of Kerala. The guidelines provided to be followed in the Containment Zones by the Government of Kerala were criticized for lacking precision in terms of the number of people allowed for various activities and ditching the needs of private establishments. This chapter attempts to critically analyse the strategies adopted and propose an outline of a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for containment. The containment plan suggests spatial models for identifying the factors influencing the delineation of Containment Zones and simulation models to aid framing guidelines to be followed in these zones. The proposed SOP for containment based on these spatial and simulation models could be referred to while preparing containment plans for any region by adapting to their corresponding administrative setup.

This chapter has two parts. In the first part, the goals and the organizational details of the international collaborative research project ‘COVID-19: Containment, Life, Work and Restart: Regional Studies’ are discussed. In the second part in consultation with the team leaders of the area studies including the city study, their general conclusions of the area study on COVID-19 are presented.