COVID-19 India: An insight into the impact of lockdown and community behavioural response

The emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases pose a threat to the global economy. The tendency to confront these pandemics is still questionable. In January 2020, the first case of coronavirus (COVID-19) in India was identified in Kerala. Later, the Indian government announced lockdown as a remedial action against COVID-19. The present work aims to elucidate the community behavioural response towards COVID-19 lockdown in India and presents comprehensive observations. Protection motivational theory has been used to build a conceptual framework. It was observed that community behavioural response includes maladaptive, adaptive and prosocial behaviours. In addition, we conclude that the effective strategy against the prevention, spread and control of pandemics and strategic management is still lacking. Hence, we propose a framework based on the learnings from COVID-19 to tackle future pandemics.