HEAL AS ONE

As we approach 2020 before, our life is full of happiness, we all experience what we wanted to try once in our life. But then, a single blink, it change our life. The happiness that we experienced before is not permanent, well in fact it is just temporary. This temporary happiness that we are experiencing right now is all because of a disease. A disease that caused a thousands of life to suffer. 

This disease is called COVID-19 or referred as 2019-nCoV, it caused by a new strain of coronavirus. The novel coronavirus outbreak began in Wuhan, China, in December, has expanded to touch every corner of the globe. Millions of people around the world have been sickened and hundreds of thousands of others have died. The World Health Organization has declared the virus a global health emergency and rated COVID-19's global risk of spread and impact as "very high," the most serious designation the organization gives. It also characterized as a pandemic. This is due to the direct proportional, wherein as humans will go outside they can get the virus everywhere that causes to have a rapid increase in the number of cases. 

More and more countries are now experiencing clusters of cases or community transmission. It is expected that as days and weeks will passed by, the number of cases and the number of deaths will continue to increase rapidly. That’s why it is better to have a immediate response. Such actions may help to delay the spread of virus.

As of March 16, 2020, President Rodrigo Duterte announced that until April 14, our country will have an Enhanced Community Quarantine or Total lockdown. It will restrict the movement of the population except for necessity, work, and health circumstances, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The ECQ caused the mobilization of Philippine government agencies and local government units as well as the passing of Republic Act No. 11469 or the "Bayanihan to Heal as One Act" to manage the pandemic in the country. The economic, environmental, political, social, and cultural impact of the lockdown has affected around 57 million people under quarantine. The effectiveness of the ECQ is noted by a study done by the COVID-19 pandemic Response Team of the University of the Philippines. However, many ECQ violators have been documented throughout its implementation. Thus, authorities have imposed stricter measures to further combat people disobeying ECQ rules. At the same time, various groups aired their concerns on human right violations committed by these authorities implementing the rules regarding the ECQ.

As they will implement a lockdown, our normal life shifted into a new normal because of the restrict movements such as we can’t necessarily go outside, we can’t meet our friends that’s why some of us may think that their whole life will now get boring. But then, implementing lockdown will be beneficial to everyone wherein we can now have more time to spend and have bond with our family, most of us had a chance to look for ourselves, to heal and improve ourselves wherein we can experience to try new things.

During this time of pandemic, everyone of us, especially Filipino youths is expected and had this opportunity to show our proficiency in using technologies. Having these knowledge in the advancement of technologies, we can contribute to our society by using social media platforms to raise awareness about this pandemic but, we should only disseminate correct knowledge and information to everyone to avoid any stress or panic. In this time of pandemic, we should help each other, we should learn to obey protocols to prevent the rapid increase of virus, we should have these trait of what we called “Bayanihan” for as we heal as one and for our country to manage the pandemic.

     

                    
                                                                                          

10 months of being in quarantine, I know that most of us had these learnings that we gained in this pandemic. With this, we should learn to disseminate it to everyone for them to also have an additional knowledge. Having small act, I know we can atleast contribute to the management of the increasing number of cases, also for our country to have improvement and be a better place to live on.

Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Se73XXJzQA

               https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_community_quarantine_in_Luzon

               https://abcnews.go.com/Health/timeline-coronavirus-started/story?id=69435165

              https://www.jus.uio.no/smr/english/research/nchr-events/events/digital-events/human-rights-in-the-new-normal.html

           https://newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/2020/03/18/frequently-asked-questions-about-coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/