Eighty three days is too long to have shut down the economy, one would argue. And yet, in the face of a highly infectious virus that has already claimed over four lakh lives across the world since being discovered in December 2019, what option do we have? The answer lies somewhere in between opening up the economy and a complete lockdown and, may be guided by how the virus operates, say Uri Alon and Ron Milo, systems biologists and professors at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.

In a TED talk that has now garnered nearly eight lakh views, Alon discusses the 4-10 strategy on exiting the lockdown. This, he says, is based on the behaviour of the novel Coronavirus: When one is infected with the virus, they are not infectious for three days and they start showing symptoms only after. So, the duo suggests that four days of work be followed by 10 days of lockdown during which people will reach peak infectiousness and avoid infecting others. "Everyone works on the same four days with measures of social distancing and masks [in place], and people with infections can self-quarantine," says Alon in the TED talk.