31st of December 2019 - the Pandora's box was opened - China officially declared its first case of the novel coronavirus. Exactly 66 days later 100,000 people across the world were affected; 11 days and the number doubled to 200,000 people. Declared by the World Health Organization as a pandemic, the coronavirus - lately known as COVID 19 - has taken a serious toll on the entire globe sooner than ever. Today, almost 4.2 lakh people are affected and 18000 people killed across 169 countries.
There had been a lot of outbreaks prior to this one, but COVID-19 is having a substantial impact on the world relative to the previous pandemics and the reasons are as follows. As COVID - 19 is a virus, there is no immediate cure or medicine to heal the disease. The only way is a vaccine to prevent it, but the problem is it takes nearly a year or even decades to come up with a vaccine and mass produce it. However, scientists are trying to make one in record time! Moreover, unlike other pandemic viruses, this takes almost 14 days before any symptoms are shown, making it a more strenuous job to detect victims and isolate them as soon as possible. Also, the fact that it is possible to get COVID even after one heals from it, is even more frightening. Though globally the death rate is below 3%, the rate at which the coronavirus is spreading is high above the limits. For instance, in Spain deaths have spiked to 514 in just the past 24 hours!
This is the first pandemic in the era of social media, hence the wealth of misinformation about the disease has spread faster than the virus itself. This further emphasises the fact that all of us should be able to distinguish between true and false information as to not exacerbate the given circumstances. There is a rising need for people around the world to unite and together fight against this deadly.
Experts and doctors worldwide are critically stressing the only way in which this battle can be fought - social distancing and self-quarantine. This is deliberately just increasing the physical space between people to avoid spreading illness. On the other hand, I would prefer the term physical distancing as humans, by nature, are social beings. So it would not be practical to be "socially distant", hence the term "physical" would be more appropriate. According to me and many, there are just three things that need to be done by everyone to derogate COVID - 19, the 20-second handwash, physical distancing and self-quarantine. People misconstrue these rules thinking it only applies for those who are actually affected by coronavirus. Furthermore, some don't at all value these instructions, with extreme cases being an escape from the isolation ward, wasting all of the efforts from the countries and doctors.
As far as the world leaders and major member countries are concerned, the war with this novel virus is far less than over. WHO is taking essential measures by advising member states which have brought many countries into lockdown. Moreover, China has to an extent successfully recovered from its once irreversible condition. Some countries such as Italy which is in a complete lockdown suggest that nature is "doing a hard reset". This actually proves to be somewhat true as the nitrogen levels in the country have drastically lowered and the water bodies are becoming clearer, inviting swans to swim too.
All in all, when it comes to each one of us all we can do is follow all the preventive measures - however, the situation in our own country - understand the severity of the situation at hand and advise friends and family to do the same. When the virus is hijacking the very rhythm of our daily lives, let us all be united and fight this World War 3 with the invisible enemy - COVID-19.