India has around 60 confirmed cases of coronavirus now. This number will increase. The good news is that there’s no community transmission as of now — but that too could change. By now, India has (1)_________ enough time to study the responses of China, South Korea, Italy and the US. What should it do?
The first thing is to widen testing. South Korea cracked down on the disease’s (2)_________ through aggressive testing. India should make sure it has (3) ________ testing kits and also explore using the shorter-duration test China used. The second is to (4) _________ and regulate international travel and travellers — inbound (5)__________ outbound. India has already done some of this. It needs to do more, including, and controversially, a restriction on travellers from the US. The third is to cancel (6)__________. Experts call this social distancing. In both China and South Korea, this helped reverse the trend in terms of new cases.
Finally, India should be ready with Plan B. At some point, when the number of cases (7)________ 1,000, maybe 5,000, contact tracing will stop making sense. The Union health ministry should, by now, have a (8)__________ plan. The experience of Italy, South Korea and the US is an (9)_____________ that, at some stage, prevention will stop making sense and the focus will have to (10)___________ to mitigation.