The severe contagiousness of the novel coronavirus and the lack of a proper solid countermeasure against the disease have rendered the world to maintain social distancing as the only step to fight the epidemic.
In continuation to that, for good reason, the government imposed an unannounced lockdown in the country in the form of a general holiday at the initial stages of the outbreak in the country. People are always instructed to stay indoors without going out unless absolutely necessary.
At first, people followed the instructions fairly well. But over time, the pressure to move the economy from a complete standstill came from various sectors, especially from the owners of export-oriented industries.
In this context, ready-made garment factories were opened from April 26 while on the occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr, a limited number of shops and shopping malls have been opened since Sunday. The mosque has also been opened to the public under certain conditions.
Now is not the time to open everything
up. We should think twice before
taking any risks
However, the sad reality is that the number of identified cases has been on the rise since the beginning of the relaxation of the lockdown.
As of Tuesday, the total number of COVID-19 patients in the country rose to about 17,000 with the trend of new identified cases being clearly upward. If it continues like this, we must adopt more stringent lockdown if there is need to counter this situation.
How far we will go from the relaxation of the lockdown towards the speeding up of economic activity will depend on whether we have the health facilities to cope with the additional health risks that will arise as a result, or in other words, the increased risk of COVID-19 disease.
This is true, but it does not increase our ability to handle health risks. Now that the infection rate is increasing day by day, relaxing the lockdown should have taken more time. Now is not the time to open everything up.
We should think twice before taking any risks. Since the lockdown is relaxed and it shows that the infection is increasing again, the lockdown has to be made severer. We expect the administration to be more stringent, if necessary.