Covid-19 spread across the globe very quickly and some countries had a very different approach to others. Due to these different approaches some countries had much higher Covid-19 cases. For example Brazil had a huge spike in cases and there could be numerous reasons for this:
· Many people live in slums therefore social distancing is very difficult and spread of the disease is very easy
· There is also a lack of resources such as running water and this means that it is harder to sanitise and again the virus can spread more
· Another reason is that certain countries are a lot less wealthy than European countries and they don’t have the resources needed like PPE
· Additionally in certain countries such as the UK borders were closed and flights were stopped however for other countries it is next to impossible to control people coming in and out of the country
Sweden’s approach to Covid-19 was quite different, as they did not go into lockdown straight away. Arguably, due to this approach Sweden had the largest number of cases in Scandinavia. The main reason for this approach was the government not wanting people to lose their jobs. However due to many other countries closing their own borders jobs in Sweden were impacted nevertheless.
Moving on, it is now important to look at how the UK handled the outbreak of the virus. Firstly the main ways in which the UK handled the pandemic well included:
· Economic support was offered by the government
· Daily briefings to the nation so that everyone knew what was going on
· Biggest vaccine rollout in all of the NHS history
· Country was brought together for example through clapping for the NHS every Thursday
However there are also many ways in which the UK government did not handle the pandemic well and this included:
Doctors told to wash and reuse PPE when stocks were running low
· Education was heavily impacted as schools were closed for months
· Mental Health was severely impacted negatively
3 million adults went hungry in the first 3 weeks of lockdown, with 1.5 million going an entire day without eating
· Fatalities caused as a result of poor mental health, domestic abuse, isolation and lockdown poverty
Despite all the apparent negatives that lockdown brought in general, it is very important to look at all the reasons why a lockdown was necessary. The question that many people ask is: did lockdown work? In terms of answering this question the main factors that lockdown affected were infection rates and deaths. In response to lockdown, the infection rates did eventually decrease however this took time as an impact of not isolating for the weeks prior to lockdown. As well as this, by staying at home we were able to limit spread and therefore fewer deaths. Another factor is that as the infection rate was decreased, scientists and doctors were given more time to develop drugs and treatments and they were able to be properly tested and checked so that they could save lives.
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