How to Exit Lockdown in India

Divide the country into blocks of 100,000 people. If it is metropolitan area, make it 1,000,000 people.

Identify the blocks that have a strong medical facility within them. Call these Class 1 zones.

From those that do not contain, identify those that have a medical facility within 5 km. Call these Class 2 zones. Similarly identify class 3, 4 and 5 zones, who have a facility within 10, 15 and 20 km.

Identify all class 1 zones. Select those zones that are 50 kms apart. Read this carefully. Select class 1 zones that are atleast 50 kms apart.

This is a graph theory problem. It is called Nearest Neighbor Search.

Lift the lockdown in all these. But do not allow interzone movement. That means, you have several thousand communities of 100,000 people freely doing their business but not crossing their borders.

If they detect anyone falling sick, the medical facility should be able to handle. The current rate of hospitalization is about 5 per 100,000. Even if it jumps 10x the facility in that zone will handle it.

Let 2 weeks pass.

Now open up remaining class 1 zones which are 40 kms apart. Wait two weeks. Then 30 kms apart. So on and on..

Then do the same with class 2 zones. Then class 3 zones.

This is like coloring blocks which are initially 50 kms apart, then 40 kms apart and so on.

Any computer science graduate worth his salt can give this schedule. Or better yet. Please contact any professor in IIT (Prof SN Maheswari for eg.)

Eventually the zones will merge. Then you automatically lift the interzone movement.

You can optimise this even more, if you can medically prove, you can increase the zone size to say 1 crore people safely. This is a question of healthcare informatics.

Thank you for your time.