  Several countries that have been successful in constraining the severity of
COVID-19 pandemic via "lockdown" are now considering to slowly end it, mainly
because of enormous socio-economic side-effects. An abrupt ending of lockdown
can increase the basic reproductive number and undo everything; therefore,
carefully designed exit strategies are needed to sustain its benefits post
upliftment. To study the role of fear conditioning on mitigating the spread of
COVID-19 in post-lockdown phase, in this work, we propose an age- and social
contact- structures dependent Susceptible, Feared, Exposed, Infected and
Recovered (SFEIR) model. Simulating the SFEIR model on Indian population with
fear conditioning via mass media (like, television, community radio, internet
and print media) along with positive reinforcement, it is found that increase
in fraction of feared people results in the significant decrease in the growth
of infected population. The present study suggests that, during post-lockdown
phase, media induced fear conditioning in conjunction with closure of schools
for about one more year can serve as an important non-pharmaceutical
intervention to substantially mitigate this pandemic in India. The proposed
SFEIR model, by quantifying the influence of media in inducing fear
conditioning, underlies the importance of community driven changes in country
specific mitigation of COVID-19 spread in post-lockdown phase.
