  The paper addresses the question of lives versus livelihood in an SIRD model
augmented with a macroeconomic structure. The constraints on the availability
of health facilities - both infrastructure and health workers determine the
probability of receiving treatment which is found to be higher for the patients
with severe infection than the patients with mild infection for the specific
parametric configuration of the paper. Distinguishing between two types of
direct intervention policy - hard lockdown and soft lockdown, the study derives
alternative policy options available to the government. The study further
indicates that the soft lockdown policy is optimal from a public policy
perspective under the specific parametric configuration considered in this
paper.
