Analysis of Global Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic in A Year

It has been more than a year since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which had claimed millions of lives throughout the world in such a short time while changing the entire way by which people spend their daily routine and related to the rest of the world. The global impact of COVID-19 pandemic has been a series of unexpected and unfortunate events in a single year.

In the year 2020, on March 11, the World Health Organization’s director-general declared the worldwide spread of COVID-19 epidemic as a pandemic, as the infection was rapidly spreading throughout the world. On that day, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus gave a public statement saying that the World Health Organization is accessing the severity of the coronavirus outbreak, and they have become extremely concerned regarding the alarming rate of transmission of infection and its severity, along with the shocking levels of inactivity against its prevention around the world.

The purpose of Dr. Tedros was to make the world realize that way of living around the world is going to change in the near future, and it did change drastically around the world. The global impact of COVID-19 infection has been severe as it has changed the way of living of almost every population throughout the planet due to nationwide lockdowns and social distancing protocols.

Since the start of the spread of the coronavirus infection, more than 118.7 million cases have been diagnosed, while 2.6 million deaths have occurred after patients got critically ill due to the viral disease.

Due to the global impact of COVID-19 pandemic, there have been local and international restrictive measures which were implemented to curb the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus variant which causes the infection of COVID-19, including orders to stay at home, travel restrictions, limitations on meeting with individuals other than from your own household, shutting down of nonessential businesses and shops, along with gyms, art galleries and museums, movie cinemas, and even places used to worship.

Job insecurities and work from home

Due to the negative global impact of COVID-19 pandemic, millions of individuals around the world began working from their residence due to the initiation of nationwide lockdowns, as all offices and businesses were shut down in an attempt to limit the further transmission of the deadly viral infection. According to the European Commission brief, around 40% of the individuals’ underemployment across the European Union began to work full time remotely as a result of the global impact of COVID-19 pandemic.

In the United States, around 41.8% of the working population was working from their residence full time in the month of December last year, while 56.8% was working in some part of the day.

According to Adam Ozimek, the Chief Economist at freelancing site Upwork, the research conducted by them regarding the global impact of COVID-19 has shown the results, which revealed the long-term impact that remote working and coronavirus pandemic are likely to have regarding how hiring managers generally think about the organization they work for. Over time, as businesses have become adapted to the work from home experiments amid the pandemic, various organizations are looking forward to altering their plans for the upcoming future to permanently accommodate remote working.

Difference in remote working among genders

Remote working could have both positive and negative aspects on the well-being of the working employees. On an overall basis, the global impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of the general population throughout the world was both encouraging and destructive. Working remotely from home has been associated with increased levels of emotional exhaustion, especially in those individuals who felt isolated from their workplace colleagues, consequently having less amount of social support.

On the other hand, people have been reported to be more mentally contented as they do not have to face the stressful environment in their workplace on a daily basis.

The global impact of COVID-19 has been different among genders as it has also been noted that males are suffering from the increased amount of post-work exhaustion while working remotely from home. Meanwhile, females have reported suffering from high levels of exhausting post office work as compared to their work colleagues who remained in the workroom.

This could also be due to the traditionally persisting gender roles, in which the female tends to take care of the majority of the tasks at home, including household chores and childcare.

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