Time has come to welcome a brighter year

In less than a fortnight, we are bidding farewell to the year 2020 that proved to be most horrific in the history of this millennium. We are heading towards a new year filled with hopes to put an end to the year that made our lives so miserable. We never experienced such a critical situation in our life any time before. The year 2020 has been a black year all through and we have led dark days. In this year, especially as never before, our lives were filled with unusual fear and confusion leading to a great deal of struggle in every walk of life.

It was for the first time we came across new words like "coronavirus" and "Covid-19". We had to abruptly come up with a new development during the 1st quarter of this year, wherein the outbreak of the previously unheard phenomenon had started inflicting people by causing mild to severe symptoms of cold, cough and fever in a few people initially and thereupon swiftly started spreading to many in the later course.

As there is apparently no possible cure to this disease so far, people had to die every day in large numbers as has been reported in the media. It has been an awful experience to watch the reportage on TV that projected the number of positive cases rising up each day with a heavy toll of deaths on a parallel scale. The year 2020 which we are abandoning is exceptionally the "corona year" that has left diabolical experiences in our lives. Everyone lived with fear by restricting their movements and meetings with others.

This kind of situation has caused a lot of inconvenience and has left freedom of social movement and normal activity totally curtailed. Also, the economic activity has come to a standstill causing desperation to the people and the government. The lives of all people were nonetheless restricted to social distancing. Everyone's attention was drawn towards observing health awareness and health protocol as prescribed medically by the doctors under the supervision of WHO.

"Stay home, stay safe" has become a popular slogan which one ought not to ignore as a rule, in order to be on the safer side. Also maintaining social distance has been the norm that needed to be followed scrupulously by one and all. Further, sanitisation has been a must practice invariably on all these days. So also, quarantine has been a compulsory duty to undergo in case of those affected by corona.

The novel coronavirus initially originated in the Wuhan city of China in October, 2019 has since been prevalent not at a single place, region, city or country but it has come to stay as a worldwide phenomenon by wiping out not mere thousands but lakhs of lives all through and all across since its outbreak.

In India, while some State governments did extremely well to keep the pandemic under control, some States have failed to live up to the expectations in such a task of playing their role. However, the Centre under the leadership of Modi has kept no stone unturned to set the house in order by dispensing all necessary care and interest while passing through different spells of lockdown and unlock after the corona wave hit the nation.

After the end of the year 2020, when we enter into the new year 2021, all our hopes are pinned on the invention and use of a vaccine to relieve us from all our trouble and torment we have undergone as a result of "corona year" 2020. Fortunately, we have at our disposal several candidates which are on active trials globally. These vaccines developed so far and are in final stages of trials include Pfizer, Biotech Moderna, Covaxine, Astrazeneca, Sputnik-V etc. which are likely to come to our rescue and save our future lives from the monstrous effects of coronavirus.

During the year 2020, the entire human activity has come to a grinding halt. It is still uncertain whether the corona wave would further continue to haunt / torment us also in the year 2021 or would subside on its own to give us relief. A new ray of hope for the suffering humanity in the new year 2021 is expected to dawn in the form of a life-saving and a clinically approved vaccine that can work out at any cost.

Hence, a transition from the year 2020 to 2021 seems to be highly hopeful to dispel darkness and bring in brightness eventually. 2021 is the year to celebrate for the arrival of vaccines to combat Covid-19 that is affecting humanity.

Bh Indu Sekhar, Hyderabad