Student's Corner: Global Effect of Covid-19

In December 2019, an unknown virus emerged from the Wuhan city of China where infected patients were showing symptoms of pneumonia. The first case was belived to have come from the local seafood wholesale market. By January 1st, the wholesale market was closed as the health experts found 40 new cases. On January 7th, World Health Organization (WHO) officially announced that they had found a new virus and named it as COVID-19. 

On January 13, first case was reported outside China in Thailand. On January 23th, the lockdown of Wuhan city was announced by China.  However, the virus had already spread globally. The WHO has already announced Covid-19 as global pandemic. More than 2 million have already been infected from which more than one hundred 90 thousand have died from the virus.

The place of the origin of this virus is not yet confirmed. Many countries accuse that the virus was leaked from a lab in Wuhan which China has strongly denied.

When the first cases started emerging in Europe, especially in Italy, people did not take the cases seriously. Many youth believed that the virus didnot have any effect on them. Due to this, the virus rapidly started spreading throughout Europe, US and other parts of the world. Today, countries like the US, Spain, and Italy have the highest number of cases surpassing China from where the virus was frist seen. The total number of death in the US has drastically increased with more than nine hundred thousand cases with more than 51 thousand deaths.

Due to COVID-19, most of the people are in quarantine meaning all the schools, offices, and many factories being closed for more than a month. This has hardly stricken the economy of every country and especially developing countries. Many countries government has passed strict rules for people who are attempting to break the quarantine law and have promised to provide proper care to their citizen.

But most of the South Asian countries have failed to do so. In Nepal, many people, especially the daily wage workers, are out in the streets because they do not have anything to eat and nowhere to go. The lockdown in Nepal was suddenly implemented with most of the people not prepared for it. Now that the lockdown has been implemented for almost a month, people are still in the street. Many of them don’t even have basic needs like food and water. The government has failed to help those people. If the virus starts to spread in that group of people, the country will certainly turn into the desert of dead people.

Covid-19 is spreading rapidly in most countries and still no proper vaccine has been created. WHO has requested the entire global citizens to practice social distancing to flatten the curve until the virus comes under control. Many health experts are giving their lives to save the people who are getting infected by the virus. Among these health experts, some has raised awareness to the citizen of the global by showing banners like “Stay home because I can’t.” After Covid-19 is over, things are certainly not coming back to normal at once. It may take months to recover the economy. People who have lost their jobs due to the virus have to search for a new one to sustain the economy of their family and their country. The crises that we are facing now will take time to be normal even after Covid-19 pandemic is over.

There are some positive impacts of the virus as well. Due to lockdown, the environment of the world has drastically changed. The emission of carbon gases is low. The statistical report says that pollution is New York has been reduced to 50% compared to last year. Similarly, in China, the emission fell to 25% after factories were shuttered. The emission of greenhouse gases is low after the global lockdown has been implemented. Whether the impact has been positive or negative ever people's lives have changed due to the virus.

With proper vaccines still not made to tackle the virus, every citizen must be responsible and sensible in time like this. The cases will increase and so will the death. The best we can do is stay home and flatten the curve. Stay Home! Stay safe!

Reference:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200326-covid-19-the-impact-of-coronavirus-on-the-environment

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/timeline-china-coronavirus-spread-200126061554884.html