COVID-19: How do we get out of this quagmire?

The COVID-19 virus (C19) pandemic is turning out to be the event of the century. Even World War seems timid in comparison. We are in the 4th month of the virus (in non-China countries) and have gone past the lockdown in many places. Isn’t it time we re-think the approach? What if there is another wave of C19 coming soon? What if C19 is the first of many such events in the future?

Before we get into analysis and solution design, summarizing the C19 quirks:

• While a large section of the affected population is asymptomatic, for some it can be lethal
• There isn’t clarity on all the ways C19 spreads
• It’s known to affect the lungs, heart, and kidneys in patients with weak immunity

It has been hard to identify a definitive pattern of the virus. Some observations in managing the C19 situation are:

• With no vaccine in sight, the end of this epidemic looks months or years away
• Health care personnel in hospitals need additional protection to treat patients
• Lockdowns lead to severe economic hardship and its repeated application can be damaging
• Quarantining people has an economic cost, especially in the weaker sections of society

If one takes a step back to re-think about this, we are primarily solving 2 problems:

• Minimise deaths: Minimise the death of C19 and non-C19 patients in this period
• Maximise economic growth: The GDP output/growth should equal or higher than pre-C19 levels

One needs to achieve the 2 goals in an environment of rising number of C19 cases.

Minimise deaths

An approach that can be applied to achieve this is:

Data driven health care capacity planning

• Build a health repository of all the citizens with details like pre-existing diseases, comorbidity, health status, etc. The repository needs to be updated quarterly to account for patient data changes
• This health repository data is combined with the C19 profile (disease susceptibility) and/or other seasonal diseases to determine the healthcare capacity (medicines, doctors, etc.) needed
• The healthcare capacity deficit/excess needs to be analysed in categories (beds, equipment, medicine, personnel, etc.) and regions (city, state, etc.) and actions taken accordingly
• Regular capacity management will ensure patients aren’t deprived of timely treatment. In addition, such planning helps in the equitable distribution of healthcare across regions and optimising health care costs. Healthcare sector is better prepared to scale-up/down their operations
• Based on the analysis citizens can be informed about their probability of needing hospitalisation on contracting C19.  Citizens with a higher health risk on C19 infection should be personally trained on prevention and tips to manage the disease on occurrence

The diagram below explains the process

• Mechanism to increase hospital capacity without cost escalation

Due to the nature of C19, health personnel are prone to infection and their safety is a big issue.  There is also a shortage of hospitable beds available.  Even non-C19 patients aren’t getting the required treatment because health personnel seek it as a risk. This resulted in, healthcare costs going up and availability reducing. 

To mitigate such issues, hospital layouts may need to be altered (as shown in the diagram below).  The altered layout improves hospital capacity and availability of health care personnel. It also reduces the need for the arduous C19 protection procedures. Such procedures reduce the patient treatment capacity and puts a toll on hospital management. 

Over a period, the number of recovered C19 persons are going to increase significantly. We need to start tapping into their services to reduce the burden on the system. The hospitals need to be divided into 3 zones. The hospital zoning illustration shown below explains how this could be done. In the diagram, patients are shown in green and health care personnel are in light red.


**Assumption: Infected and recovered C19 patients are immune to the disease. This is not clearly established

• Better enforcement of social factors

The other reason for high number of infections in countries like India is a glaring disregard in following C19 rules in public places and the laxity in enforcement. Enforcement covers 2 parts, tracking incidents of violation and penalising the behaviour. Government should use modern mechanisms like crowd sourcing to track incidents and ride on the growing public fear to ensure penalty enforcement succeeds. The C19 pandemic has exposed governance limitations in not just following C19 rules, but also in other areas of public safety like road travel, sanitation, dietary habits, etc.

Maximise economic growth

The earlier lockdown has strained the economy. Adequate measures need to be taken to get the economy back on track.  Some of the areas that need to be addressed are:

• One needs to evaluate the development needs of the country in different categories like growth impetus factors (e.g. building roads, electricity capacity increase), social factors (e.g. waste water treatment plants, health care capacity), and environmental factors (e.g. solar energy generation, EV charging stations). Governments need to accelerate funding in such projects so that that large numbers of unemployed people are hired and trained. Besides giving an immediate boost to the ailing economy such projects have a future payback. The governments should not get bogged down by the huge fiscal deficit such measures can create.  Such a mechanism to get money out in the economy is far than better measures like QE (Quantitative Easing) or free money transfer into people’s bank accounts 
• Certain items like smartphone, internet, masks, etc. have become critical (for work, education, critical government announcements). It’s essential to subsidise or reduce taxes so that these items are affordable and accessible to everyone without a financial impact
• The government shouldn’t put too many C19 related controls on service offerings (e.g. shops, schools, restaurants, cabs). Putting many controls increases the cost of the service which neither the seller not buyer is willing or able to pay. Where controls are put, the Govt should bear the costs or reduce taxes or figure out a mechanism so that the cost can be absorbed.
• An event like the C19 pandemic is a great opportunity to rationalise development imbalances in the country. Government funding should be channelized more to under-developed regions. This drives growth in regions that need it most. It also prevents excess migration that has resulted in uncontrolled and bad urbanisation that has made C19 management hard (guidelines like social distance are impossible to follow)
• Post-C19 lockdown, the business environment (need for sanitizers, masks, home furniture) has changed.  To make people employable in new flourishing businesses there could be a need to re-skill people. Such an initiative can be taken up by the public/private sector
• The number of C19 infected asymptomatic patients is going to keep increasing. Building an economy around them (existing, recovered C19 patients) may not be a far-fetched idea.  E.g. jobs for C19 infected daily wage earners, C19 infected taxi drivers to transport C19 patients, etc.

In the last 100 years, mankind has conquered the destructive aspects of many a disease and natural mishap (hurricanes, floods, etc.). Human lives lost in such events has dramatically dropped over the years and our preparedness has never been this good. Nature seems to have caught up with mankind’s big strides in science and technology. C19 has been hard to reign in with no breakthrough yet. The C19 pandemic is here to stay for the near future. The more we accept this reality and change ourselves to live with it amidst us, the faster we can return to a new normal. A quote from Edward Jenner (inventor of Small Pox) seems apt in the situation – “The deviation of man from the state in which he was originally placed by nature seems to have proved to him a prolific source of diseases”.