Covid-19
In March of last year, the United States began to go on lockdown. A year later, as vaccines roll out in the U.S., we are one of the countries that is beginning to open back up. But how has the response of the United States to Covid-19 varied from other countries? How has Covid affected the world as a whole? Let’s take a brief look at the timeline of Covid-19 in various countries and how different cultures vary in their responses.
The first outbreak was in Wuhan, China. While we don’t know the exact date, we do know that the first few cases were at the very end of 2019, and within 50 days, there were over 40 cases. After the first international case was confirmed in Thailand, Wuhan began to implement mandatory screenings to try to limit the spread of Covid-19. As the virus spread throughout China, other cities also began to cancel large events and go on lockdown. However, Covid-19 didn’t stop spreading.
On January 30th, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a public health emergency of international concern. Japan has 35 cases on February 5th of 2020, and by February, Italy began to have a major outbreak of the new virus. There were 152 cases in Italy by February 23rd. Covid-19 continued to spread, making its way to various countries, including the United States on. On March 11th, WHO declares that the Covid-19 outbreak is a pandemic.
A couple of days later, the United States essentially shut down, and we have been living in the midst of the pandemic ever since.
But how did other countries react? When did they shut down, what precautions did they take, and were these precautions effective? I know that I, if not most of us, can have a tendency to focus on what directly affects us, choosing to look and study the reactions and guidelines in the United States. I want to expand our perspectives by briefly looking at the responses of other countries, specifically New Zealand and Italy.
By February 2nd, New Zealand was one of multiple countries that implemented air travel restrictions to try to limit the spread. As the article titled “New Zealand takes early and hard action to tackle COVID-19″ describes, New Zealand did not hold back from restrictions. They learned from China and worked on not just treating Covid-19 once there was an outbreak, but preventing a large outbreak from ever happening. Their goal was to have increased testing and contact tracing. On March 26th, the country went on lockdown, with everyone but essential workers being required to work from home. These precautions, while not foolproof, fared well.
The country began to lift a few precautions in April, more in May, and after two weeks of having no new cases, they declared themselves Covid-free in June. At the beginning of July, they had recorded less than 1,200 Covid-19 cases and 22 deaths. The amount of cases that they had was less than 0.0002% of their population. To put that in perspective, at the beginning of July in the United States, 0.0002% of the population was being diagnosed with Covid-19 everyday, and that number was increasing. New Zealand was one of the first countries to be Covid-free.
Italy, however, was an entirely different story. After the first two people were diagnosed with Covid-19 in January, Italy declared a state of emergency for six months. The virus continued to spread, and Italy went on a nationwide lockdown on March 11th. The country was under a strict lockdown until the beginning of May, when cases began to slow. However, a second wave hit in July of 2020 and did not have an end in sight until cases began to lower in December. Italy has continuously been under strict lockdown, but the economy has taken a toll.
I have found it interesting over the past year to watch how different countries have responded to the pandemic. In some countries, it’s easier to implement rules and guidelines. However, in others, bills have to pass through multiple branches. In addition, some countries are more focused on the economy or finding a balance between the economy and the pandemic while others focused on getting rid of Covid-19 immediately and worrying about the economy later. Each option has benefits and downfalls, and throughout the past year, we have really seen the response of different cultures in emergency situations.
Links to sources:
https://www.devex.com/news/covid-19-a-timeline-of-the-coronavirus-outbreak-96396
https://www.ajmc.com/view/a-timeline-of-covid19-developments-in-2020
