COVID-19

In December 2019 in China, a new type of virus was discovered. The disease of this virus kept spreading throughout the world and millions of people started getting infected. Almost two crore Indians have suffered from the corona virus disease and close to four lakh people have lost their lives in this pandemic as of this writing. This pandemic has struck us from December 2019 and continuing till the present date and so we are not able to celebrate any functions/events that we could earlier. From March 2020 we started seeing a big increase in the number of infection and deaths caused by this virus. India has already developed the COVID-19 vaccine(s)—covaxin and covishield. Our country has the largest number of people that have already received the COVID-19 vaccine—more than 50 crore (500 million) people. Still 80-90 crore (800-900 million) people remain who have not received the Corona vaccine. Currently, the people who are 18 and above have already got the vaccine or are given the vaccine but the people below 18 years of age haven’t been vaccinated yet. The complete lockdown gets initiated because the cases of this disease start coming out rapidly. The lockdown means all schools, offices, malls, theatres, all of the public places have been shut down so that people stop coming in contact with each other and become an agent spreading this disease.

Schools and colleges have started organizing online classes for their students. These online classes are more-or-less able to compensate for the offline/regular classes. These online classes have been started from the start of the pandemic itself so that students do not miss the syllabus and their precious time doesn’t go wasted. However, continuous use of these online resources for compensation of regular classes have become more of a hectic work. Students, teachers and parents, all of us give a lot of pressure to our brain and our brain has started to get tired of this. We want to go to school again, study properly there and enjoy with our friends, but we are not able to do so because of the pandemic. However, there are also a few good things that these online classes are able to provide us—our teachers before had to completely rely on the book to teach us; but today, with the help of internet technology, we are able to explore it to find out more answers and gain more knowledge. Students are able to get more resources for grasping the concepts quickly and easily.

Not only students, but also other people have lost their jobs because of the pandemic. People from all around the world are facing more and more problems of unemployment because this pandemic has led many people to lose their job. For example, the labourers from Bihar and other less developed states of India who went to other states to work, have returned home because the people in the other states have no work for them. So, they have come back from those states to their respective homes until this pandemic subsides. This migration of labourers, however, has a downside. Because the labourers have come from different places, even places that are in high risk of suffering from the pandemic, this pandemic has started to spread rapidly in their home states as well. So, it is better not to leave home till the pandemic subsides.

We should keep in mind that we are not completely immune to this virus yet. So, it is better to follow the precautions. We should come out of our homes only when it is necessary. We should keep washing our hands and personal and community hygiene should be followed strictly. Whenever we go outside, wearing a mask and maintaining a distance from other people around is very important. Most people do not follow this precaution. Whenever the cases in the country start to reduce, the people stop wearing masks and maintaining proper distance, leading the country’s cases to go up again. We have to follow these precautions until we are immune to the disease. Vaccination is also very important. Many people still think that vaccines can have a side-effect which is not true. If the vaccine has some side effect, then we must consult a doctor immediately after the symptoms of a side effect are seen. We all must get vaccinated as this vaccine will help us fight this disease and get immune to its attacks.