This year the world started with a massive crisis as China was facing the spread of a new virus (coronavirus) affecting Wuhan (a port city of 11 million people) by January 1st 2020. Within six weeks, all five continents have cases of this coronavirus and by March there were 102,000 infected and 3,500 people killed in more than 90 countries. Therefore, the challenge facing all countries was containment and for this the measurements taken was self-isolation.
The virus started in Wuhan a port city in the central Hubei province of China and by December 31st 2019, China alerted WHO (World Health Organisation). Early January 2020, the virus was identified as part of the coronavirus family, which also includes SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome which infected 8,000 people and killed 800 in 2002-2003), MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome which infected 2,500 and killed 900 in 2012) and the common cold.
This new virus is called COVID-19 (CO – corona, VI – virus, D – disease, 19 – 2019), but it has been commonly referred as coronavirus. The coronavirus is spread by inhaling droplets generated by cough or sneeze produced by an infected person; or by touching one’s face or nose after touching a surface contaminated by the virus. Scientist believed that the virus originated in a wet market (market that sells both dead and live animals) and it has been associated to a farm animal bitten by a bat.
The problem with COVID-19 was that by the time China announce to the WHO the existence of the virus several people infected worked at the city’s seafood wholesales market and an unknown number of travellers had already left China and returned to their own countries unknowing that they were infected, and this is how the spread started.
The rate of the infection became a problem as by mid-January there were confirmed cases across four continents including countries like United States of America, Nepal, France, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan. Therefore, by 30th January the WHO declared a global emergency as the death toll in China jumped to 170 with 7,711 infected people and had spread to all 31 provinces of China. By mid-February there were cases in Africa, and every country was evacuating their citizens from different quarantined areas and returning them home.
By mid-March the reported daily new cases in China was dropping, while countries like Italy were imposing strict quarantine due to their high volume of infected people. The WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak as a pandemic (an epidemic that has spread worldwide), as toll was 4,600 death and 126,000 infected in more than 90 countries. Making Spain and Italy the two most affected countries in Europe.
As today, USA is the country with more reported cases standing at 312,481 followed by Spain (130,759) and Italy (124,632), with UK reported at 47,8006. In case of deaths, Italy is the country with most reported deaths standing at 15,362 followed by Spain (12,418) and USA (8,503) with UK at 4,934. China stands at 82,602 cases and 3,333 deaths. Globally the number of people infected stands at 1.2 million with deaths reaching nearly 65,000. Although many countries are working hard to develop a vaccine, it is unlikely that one will be created until next year [source: WHO, 5th April 2020].
In case of the UK, the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed on 31st January and by 5th Mach the first person died of the disease. Therefore, the UK government implanted mandatory self-isolation by 20th March with the motto of: Stay home, protect the NHS and save lives.
The aim of this self-isolation is to stop the spreading of the virus by limiting the gathering of people and stopping people leaving their house only for limited purpose, which are basic shopping (food and medicine), exercise (alone), medical need, and work purpose (if unable to work from home). However, it is important to maintain a 2 meters gap between people while outside your household.
Although, the government has been able to take timely actions to avoid the spread of the disease, the people panic shopped antibacterial wipes and handwash since early March. However, as soon as the government started it plans to self-isolation and with the constant development of the case worldwide has influenced the people state of mind to a point of a massive panic shopping creating shortage of tinned food, dried food, cleaning products and toilet paper.
On Week 0 (14th March 2020), just before everything closed, we were able to do our full shopping excluding any toilet paper and antibacterial wipes.
In case of the university, plans were starting to finalise in a move to take all the classes online and all face-to-face workshops were cancelled or moved to MS team (video conference platform). Finally, the university announced that 20th March will be the last working day until further notice. Therefore, making this my last week of travelling and I needed to finish with all the arrangement for working from home and still having full access to the university resources.
On Week 1 (21st March 2020), finally all the schools were closed and everyone that was able to work from home was encouraged to so with the aim to reduce commuting, which was reduced to less than 20% in the use of underground [source: department of transport].
In our case, we arrived to the marked and faced the results of this panic shopping as many shelves containing tinned food, dried food, cleaning products, toilet paper, frozen products, bread, baking products, long-lasting milk products, and bottle water were empty. However, we were able to buy almost 80% of our list as it compromises in its majority of fresh fruits, vegetable and meat, but we were unable to buy eggs, tinned tuna and frozen vegetable. Therefore, we decided to buy food for 10 days to reduce the chance of not finding fresh items next time.
This was the first week of both myself and hubby were force to work from home. I have been working from home couple of days a week, so my home office is completely set as well as my working schedule. However, my hubby had a lot of problems as he does not like to stay at home. Although, he has his own desk, he has not fully set it up as a designated working area for home office and all the week, he was changing places from the dinner table to the office sitting area, even my own desk.
Fortunately for him, as he is part of the engineering team of his company, he had to make essential trips to the office to keep the company enable for everyone else to work from home, however, he avoided public transportation by driving himself and using antibacterial wipes for all working surfaces and his hands. During these trips, he was able to buy the missing items of our list like toilet paper and eggs.
On Week 2 (28th March 2020), we decided that we had enough food between the last week’s supermarket shopping and the ad hoc shopping, so we stayed home this weekend to see movies.
This second week of home office, I carried on with my standard working from home status. However, my hubby started to settle with his new working environment. We decided that we will share my office settings as I tend to work from midday until dinner, as I do some house work before starting my day and my hubby starts working very early around 8 am. Therefore, with this new setting our working environment is starting to work.
On Week 3 (4th April 2020), we decided that it was time to return to our weekly shopping trips and we decided to go to our regular supermarket. The new problem is that the supermarkets are now implementing the system of social distance and crowd control. Although the 2m social distance is something that you need to comply in any gather situation, it is something easy to do in any situation.
Therefore, the main problem is the crowd control as shops are limiting the number of people able to enter the shop at the same time, means that there are long queues of people waiting to enter the market. Due to this new crowd control system, we were unable to enter two shops as the queue was very long. These two shops are located in very residential areas, with easy access to public transport.
Therefore, we chose a store inside a commercial area with limited public transport access and we were able to enter without any queue. Although the crowd control in a sunny day is a nightmare, as waiting in the sun is not fun at all. The advantages were that I was able to finally have a complete shopping list, as before the panic shopping, as all the products were available but in limited amounts. The only product that was not available were the unwrapped bakery products like the fresh croissants.
After three weeks in isolation, people are starting to settle and realised that the food production is not stopping and the panic shopping has stopped allowing everyone to enjoy their normal shopping and returned to some sort of balance.
Finally, my hubby has settled down in his working area at his own desk. It was surprising to find him at his desk working. He loves that area as he is able to have a nice view as it is next to the window as this was the reason, he chose the location of this desk.
Onwards, it is important to create some kind of routine within our isolation not only to manage the day to day but to enjoy this time together as the bound forged during this time is something that will rarely occurred again. However, it is important to remember that working from home does not mean doing house work hence the importance of developing some kind of schedule.
Therefore, here are my tips of working from home and enjoy it:
Set two schedules one for the week and one for the weekend; and do not mixed them. Include in both working hours, food times, resting hours, extracurricular activities and house management hours; however, be flexible in case of any emergency.
Set a fixed place to undertake each activity like working hours in a desk, food times at the dining table, and resting hours at the TV room. Like this just changing location will keep the mind and body structure.
Start the day like if you were going to the office or school by changing and having breakfast, do not forget your meals as it tends to be very easy to skip them and continue working.
Keep your schedule at all times and finish working at the same time as without any external interference, it could be easy to overdo it and keep working.
Go out once a day to enjoy the freshness of the air to clear your mind and explore your neighbourhood.
Create a list of things that you always wanted to do and never had the time to do, and pick one to do over this isolation period outside your working hours.
Remember, the only way to manage this crisis is by every person contributing towards the safety of the country. This crisis can be managed as it is a team effort and everyone is working extra hard to keep the world safe specially health personal, food markets and food producers. However, in this world rule by technology do not forget all those engineers that are allowing the world to stay connected by keeping the networks and the internet traffic in perfect working conditions like my hubby. But do not forget, stay home, and keep safe.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
تعليقات