Vulnerable groups and gradual lifting of the lockdown: How do we avoid danger successfully?
When these few cases that started in Wuhan, China, turned into a global pandemic as we know it today, governments around the world began to question whether the modern world was ultimately prepared for a health crisis with such a high rate of severity. About four million people have been infected with Covid-19 and nearly 300,000 have lost their lives to the deadly virus. Many countries in the world, since their first official in house incidents, took immediate action and closed shops and schools, universities, and services. Other countries ignored the risk or decided to follow different crisis management strategies such as consolidating test tests for Covid-19 for the majority of their citizens or followed the herd immunity tactic. Of course, avoiding a lockdown and applying similar tactics has been implemented mainly in countries with strong health systems, such as Germany (with about 30,000).
Greece is one of the European countries that decided to move forward with a complete lockdown, despite having faced such a severe economic crisis in the past and knowing that a complete shut down would be financially disastrous, in order to save human lives rather than money. The daily outbreaks in Greece dropped dramatically compared to other countries that found it difficult to avoid extensive losses due to questionable COVID-19 protection policies. Of course, the financial and organizational cost of the lockdown was one of a kind, with most workforces dealing with huge issues such as problems with organizing work from home or difficulties adapting to modern web meetings and workplaces.
At first, the problems that all employees faced were enormous and were related to poor internet connection or lack of tech equipment at home. Thus these difficulties entered our lives only for good reasons. To protect all people from being infected and especially the vulnerable.
The following are classified as vulnerable groups based on scientific research on Covid-19: People with diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, Hypertension, Cancer, and Pregnant Women or people with weakened immune systems in general. In addition to the groups that should be particularly careful, there are also people who come into daily contact with family members who belong to vulnerable groups or the elderly.
Throughout the lockdown, everybody worked from home with the help of webinars or virtual meeting platforms of their choice and somehow, things started to fall into place again despite the difficulties of the whole situation.
On May 4, after extensive discussions and studies, the Greek state decided to lift some of the measures of the lockdown which followed up with positive results and a large percentage of employees returning to their stores and companies. Of course, the virus never stopped being a possible threat to all of us and specifically the vulnerable groups, which by the state law continued to stay at home with a personal leave letter.
Is it possible to integrate everybody equally into the workplace after the lockdown ends? Can we operate normally but still protect the vulnerable from the virus?
The answer is Yes. Both the scientific community and the Greek state agreed to move forward and voted for laws that formalize the employer’s right to allow some workers to work from home, to avoid physical presence in the workplace so that everybody’s health is safeguarded at any time. Additional laws were made for people suffering from Cancer or Tumors so that they can claim their right to work from home due to their condition. Soon a similar law is going to be enforced for people with similar conditions and also pregnant women.
It is clear that the Government took the right measures quickly enough to avoid the catastrophe. There is no doubt that there are more challenges out there for the Greek people to face sooner or later but if this crisis has taught us anything, it is that there is no problem that we cannot solve if we work collectively take into account the needs of all subgroups of our society.
Sources:
https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-on-lockdown-coronavirus-italy-2020-3
