The Long-Term Effect of COVID-19

There are different opinions in the scientific community about the origin of COVID-19. However, it is mostly believed that a man ate a bat in a city named Wuhan, China, became infected, and the disease was later named COVID-19, or “Corona.” It eventually spread throughout the world and was declared a pandemic.

Today, on 31 May 2020, almost 60 lakh people have been infected by this disease, and it is still spreading at a very high speed.

Right now, almost every person in the world is worried. Every country is trying to find a vaccine that can cure COVID-19, but we are still helpless and forced to sit at home.

If we talk about India alone, the data suggests that there were 10 crore job losses in April 2020, and almost 12 crore people lost their jobs in May 2020. According to www.unemploymentinindia.cmie.com, as of 29 May 2020, the unemployment rate in India was 23.6%. This will affect our economy very badly.

India’s GDP for the last quarter was already at 3.1%, an 11-year low. Now, after this pandemic, the government itself is saying that the country’s GDP for the next year will be in negative numbers.

Now you can understand how badly COVID-19 has affected our country. It will haunt our economy for the next 2 to 3 years. Still, it depends on how fast vaccines are developed and how quickly industries can start operating in full swing.

As far as industries are concerned, they totally depend on labourers and workers who work for minimum wages. But right now, almost 90% of the labourers have left the cities and travelled to their villages. Most of them are not planning to come back to the cities that gave them so much pain when they needed some love, empathy, and food from the city and its people.

COVID-19 has already destroyed a lot of things that are not visible right now. But once time passes, we will be able to see its long-term effects on a much larger scale.