COVID in the New Year

Tuesday, 4 January 2022 01:40 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Such is human nature, that no matter how shocking or debilitating a disaster or situation, we will always find a way to normalise it. And so it is, nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, there seems to be a sense of blissful blitheness amongst the general public over the latest news surrounding the spread of Omicron – the latest COVID variant going around.

Sure, health officials have warned of the community spread of the variant in Sri Lanka, while little is still known about variant itself, which is said to have differing symptoms from previous iterations. Yet, parties were in full flow in the holiday season this past month, while it looks increasingly like offices have begun calling workers back onsite.

The former, while more problematic in terms of optics, probably has less of an impact than the latter. Indeed, if the past two years have shown anything, it’s that companies can quite easily function with work-from-home protocols in place, so the need to call employees back to work – particularly in the private sector – seems to be for the most part, aside from unavoidable scenarios, unnecessary clinging on to archaic work ideals.

In fact, it could be argued that reducing contact amongst workers, considering it’s where people spend most of the day – indoors to boot, where air circulation is a known method of coronavirus spread – could be considered one of the foremost ways of limiting the COVID spread.

One thing the six-week pseudo lockdown in August/September 2021 showed was that the Sri Lankan public could not be relied on to adhere to guidelines to a reasonable extent – even if they’re not perfectly implemented. Indeed, at the time the Government wasn’t particularly strict in ensuring guidelines were followed; even while an inter-province travel ban was in place, social media had pictures of many travelling around the country, while vehicular traffic was still fairly prevalent.

The difference between then and now, between COVID cases declining and increasing, has arguably been the perception amongst the public. Back then companies still managed to work efficiently through work-from-home protocols, while trips to supermarkets and malls were limited, if not exactly minimised. Much of this was down to a certain degree of self-policing among the public, if not for any reason but the fact that there was at least a notional lockdown in place.

However, while the lockdown was officially lifted to allow for daily labourers to return to work – the section of society most impacted by COVID restrictions – it is paramount that other businesses and individuals able to work-from-home or remotely do so when and where possible.

As mentioned earlier, the last two years have unequivocally shown that certain office jobs do not require a physical ‘at office’ presence, so there is no need for private companies to call employees back to work wholesale. COVID is not something that is going to go away quietly, and the sooner that the public and more so the private sector realise and adapt to this, instead of making futile – and life-threatening – attempts to ‘return to normal,’ the better.