Anand Mahindra says lockdown extensions are economically disastrous, create medical crisis

While acknowledging that decision-making for policymakers is not easy, Mahindra said that the lockdown extension will not help.

Moneycontrol News

May 26, 2020 / 12:18 IST

Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra on Monday said lockdown extensions not only affect the economy but also create a medical crisis.

“Lockdown extensions aren’t just economically disastrous, as I had tweeted earlier, but also create another medical crisis,” the Mahindra Group CEO said. He made the comment referring to an article that highlighted the dangerous psychological effects of lockdowns and the huge risk of neglecting non-COVID patients.

Lockdown extensions aren’t just economically disastrous, as I had tweeted earlier, but also create another medical crisis. This article highlights the dangerous psychological effects of lockdowns & the huge risk of neglecting non-covid patients. (1/2) https://t.co/XAks2nxbdH
— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) May 25, 2020

While acknowledging that decision-making for policymakers is not easy, Mahindra said that the lockdown extension will not help. Instead, the government, with the help of the army’s expertise, should focus on the rapid expansion of field hospital beds with oxygen lines.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

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There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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