Surviving Covid 19
Covid 19 was one of the worst out breaks that has ever happened in this world. Nations globally lost most of their citizens and to protect themselves counties had to close their borders. This means no one was able to travel out of the country or come into a country. Kenya also had to close his boarders and most of the government parastatals and other private businesses had too temporarily close. Hospitals were unable to close down during the epidemic, actually this is the time the hospitals got busy and full. Getting an empty bed inside most hospitals was a hustle because people were getting sick, and the beds were fully occupied. Some hotels had to be converted to quarantine centers so they could separate the guys suffering from other illness and people with covid.
Three months before the epidemic is when I had my son and I was working in a hospital. During the epidemic we the hospital didn’t work and so I had to report to work every week. This was scary and dangerous because after work I had to go home to be with my kids. This was very dangerous so to minimize the danger I had to stay at work for six straights in a week to minimize the risk. When I reached home the first thing was to remove all my clothes, wash them, take a shower and put on clean clothes before I could interact with my kids. All my shoes were kept outside at the balcony for security measures.
I remember there was a week I was not able to taste nor smell the food that was cooked. Lucky for me working at the hospital we used to self-medicate and used a lot of immune boosters. This was even before they had come up with covid vaccine, So the only thing you could do was to treat each symptom. Again, using public transportation to and back from work was another hustle. From where I stayed I use two buses to take me to work. One from home to Nairobi Central Business district and another one to westlands region. During these periods it was mandatory to have a surgical face mask. There is no building, mall or any premises you could access without surgical face mask and using hand sanitizer.
At the hospitals we document one patient death at the hospital because of covid. This was our first and only experience handling a patient who was infected. The problem was the patient must had been sick at home and stayed with it untreated for a long time and when the patient was brought it his condition was not okay. I remember that day we had to make sure he had his own special quarantine room, move the oxygen tank to his room because he had difficulty breathing. Sadly he did not get to see the next day. This was a big shock to all the hospital staff, doctors and other patients who were admitted there. This is because through out the epidemic we just saw on the news people dying at home, cars and various hospitals but it had not happened in our facility.
This made us control the patients we were taking in, sanitizing the hospital lounge area every night while the rest of the patients were sleeping. During the morning time we also sanitize all the wards and bathrooms to minimize the risk of getting or spreading the virus in the hospital. All the visitors, staff and any other clients coming to the hospital we had to be sanitized and there temperature to be recorded. These are just simple measures to protect the rest of the clients who have been admitted there. We cannot tell if the simple measure worked but we can say we only lost one patient at the hospital. I am sure other patients and staff also got infected, but it was controlled.
During this period we lost a neighbor that I knew personally and she was fit and other former classmate of mine in primary school lost their mother. Actually this affected my mum the most cause my mother knew the neighbor though they were no best of friends but my classmates mother was her close friend. During this time is when she decided to relocate from the city and leave at our rural home where there are not so many people and it was safer. Many senior citizens relocated to the village because of that. It is so interesting how an outbreak can alter people lives and make them do thing they had not even planned for.
When the vaccine was created, and it landed in Kenya people working at the hospitals were the first to get the vaccine. This helped a lot to reduce the death and panic around Kenya. At least the after the jab Kenyan citizens were able to resume work and things started resuming to normal. Though some business when broke during the period and some were not able to resume from where they left off. Some people had to start from rock bottom and other companies had to reduce the salaries of their staff in order to operate. Life was not normal after covid epidemic hit us. I remember my landlord during that period allowed my not to pay rent for a month. Other landlord during that period allowed there tenants not to pay because there knew the tenants had to money and even if you kick them out the chances of you getting another tenant would be difficult.
We do not know where covid originated from, but it killed so many people and changed how things are operating now. The biggest question is will there be another out break even worse than covid 19. Will we be prepared to face it or will we be able to get a vaccine faster than how we got covid vaccines. We lost to many people during covid, buried our family members and neighbors was not easy. Are we ready for the next outbreak or catastrophe
