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Covid-19 : 30 Years On

On 25th March 2020, Shehan Fernando, an employee of a computer hardware store
returned home earlier than usual, as he thought he got a bad case of the flu. Shehan
had a runny nose and a dry cough which he hadn’t taken much notice of. The fever he
had, was not responding to the standard soluble aspirin or to the age-old concoction
brewed from dried coriander seeds. Having found it increasingly difficult to breath, his
wife promptly heated a pot of water so that he could inhale the steam to clear any nasal
congestion. As his condition rapidly deteriorated, an ambulance was summoned but
Shehan never realized that he would not live to see his family or his home ever again.
Instead, he had become a statistic of yet another Covid-19 death.

Covid-19 was a global pandemic which was at its peak from 2020 to 2023. Having first
emerged from a livestock market in Wuhan, China in December 2019, the virus rapidly
mutated to a form that caused severe respiratory and circulatory illnesses amongst
humans. The virus was so contagious that it spread rapidly across continents. Droplets
emitted from a human when sneezing, consuming food or even when engaged in
conversation, remained air-borne for hours. Anyone who came in contact with these
droplets became infected or carried the virus and unknowingly, passed it on to all those
he or she met.

This uncontrollable spread of the virus lead to a global scale lockdown which had
disastrous economic and social consequences, with travel restrictions and strictly
enforced curfews to prevent mobility and congregation of people. Many industries came
to a grinding halt and development turned anti-clockwise. Hotels, once bustling with
tourists, were converted to quarantine centres for those who were compelled to travel.
Health care structures were overwhelmed in trying to carry out mass scale Covid-19
testing, contact tracing and caring for those infected. High-risk areas were locked down,
permitting only essential goods and services to be made available to those communities.
An air of anxiety enveloped the globe. Some lost their livelihoods while others lost their
loved ones and their own lives. Human wants were rapidly down-graded to basic needs
and traditional family values gradually resurfaced with the easing of the human rat-race.