Everyone was eagerly waiting for the year 2020, but no one had ever imagined, the wrath it’s about to bring to our lives. There were some news of a new viral illness emerging from Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province in China, in the last month of 2019, the strain was later recognised as SARS-CoV-2 and the illness was labelled as COVID-19. The world was still naïve about it and it was not long this virus was about to travel the whole world and was waiting to cause havoc in our lives, by taking a toll on the lives of our loved ones and destroying our livelihood and the world’s economy.
It was only in the first week of March that this illness managed to reach India, and I witnessed my first case on 14th of March, in my OPD when a young girl who arrived from London developed respiratory symptoms and later tested positive. She was only the 97th patient that came positive. The sheer fear of the illness was so much that when the list of possible contacts with that girl, to quarantine themselves, emerged on social media, the name of the doctor along with other 22 contacts spread like wildfire and was misinterpreted as the doctor contacting the illness itself. The phone calls started pouring in that I had contacted the illness. The uncertainty and the fear lead to people hiding their symptoms, and due to lack of evidence based treatment the healthcare was in a soup, as in how to save the critically ill.
Soon the government had imposed strict lockdown and advised the people to stay indoors and only leave for essential services. The public places, the schools, the offices, the gyms, the parks, the cinemas, the restaurants and everything we knew of, were closed. Roads were eerie and empty and it felt like a zombie movie. Only the essential services were accessible, and so was the hospital where I worked.
While working from home becoming a norm, the home had turned into an office, and in the process the atmosphere of an actual home was lost. The young generation was succumbing to a new type of mental illness which never seen in the world before. The laptop was taking years from their lives, as they felt suffocating and left gasping for breath between the four walls of their rooms. The online and virtual meetings were becoming more appropriate and the tele-consultation was legalised in the process.
Initially because of lockdown, the various infectious diseases of the summer markedly declined, the hospital footfall reduced, but with COVID-19 becoming dominant, the hospital beds were again occupied. Masks and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits became a necessity while managing patients, the doctors, nurses and the other healthcare staff became the new soldiers. They put their lives on stake for their duty to save the millions of patients, and in the process, thousands of healthcare workers succumbed, fighting this deadly viral illness.
After working in a dedicated COVID-19 facility for exactly 204 days including 30 straight Sundays, I finally got the taste of it, when I and my family contacted the illness. It started with fever associated with chills, severe bodyache and backache. Even after treating over 1500 such patients, the uncertainty of the illness remains, and all I can do is pray that it doesn’t take a severe form.
We have come a long way, adjusted our lives to survive along with this virus, yet we have a long way to go before we can keep this under control. As our country is approaching the 10 million cases and entering the last month of 2020, I wonder how the next year will prove to be a boon with all the vaccines in development showing promising results.