Background: The WHO declared Covid-19 a pandemic. At this stage in many countries, one of the questions yet to be answered with certainty is where a good proportion of people get the infection from, because there are no known index cases for the newly infected after an initial period where cases are easily traced back to travellers and persons known to have been in contact with already infected cases. At this point it is safe to assume that there are unknown sources of infection in the community. It is on the backdrop of this that social distancing is suggested as an intervention to prevent and/or reduce transmission in the community. Several countries globally have adopted locking down their territories as an intervention to slow or stop the spread of the virus based on evidence from countries that have faced the brunt of other epidemics like SARS and Ebola, and the Covid-19 pandemic ahead of others.However there are challenges of adopting the intervention in a one-size-fits-all way considering the varying economies and socio-cultural ways of life in the different countries. Therefore this evidence-informed rapid policy brief presents implementation strategies for a contextualised jurisdictional lockdown for a low and middle income economy like Uganda.In it we suggest that a community-based lockdown is appropriate and effective in slowing the transmission of infection in the Covid-19 epidemic. The lockdown would be enforced in smaller manageable regional or localised units demarcated according to some existing boundaries or temporary new ones. There are basics that these units would aim to have in place to be functional and can survive the lockdown period independently. These include seven essential elements:- A comprehensive and functional health service- Basic essential social services- Special health border/boundary surveillance- Active social surveillance- Control of fear, misinformation and propaganda- Support for the local community- Survival supportWe also suggest that the above should be enforced in the following context or with consideration to the following: ⢠The need to view the epidemic as a security threat - health and social security. ⢠A need to respect the basic human rights of all citizens, and to use as much diplomacy as is guided by the national social protection policy of Uganda. ⢠The opportunity to harness and institutionali
