LONDON, ONT. -- Thursday marks exactly one year since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.
In that time life has changed drastically, and in some ways we find ourselves in a familiar position as last year with the looming threat of a third wave in the coming weeks, but unlike a year ago hope exists in the form of vaccines for an eventual return to some form of normalcy.
London’s COVID-19 story actually began long before March 11, 2020 with the first case in the community being identified in a Western student back in Jan. 2020.
However, it would be the extension of the annual March Break for schools that signalled life was about to significantly change for every one.
As cases rose the break continued to be extended. Businesses were forced to close as the first lockdown took hold, and it became common place to see boarded up windows across downtown London.
In the coming months everyone would have to adjust to wearing masks in public.
Frontline health care workers were overrun with a pandemic scenario not seen in roughly a hundred years.
Parents quickly learned to become teachers, teachers adjusted to a way of teaching they had never done before.
The list goes on with all the significant and profound ways our lives have changed in just a single year.
So where are things today, on the one year anniversary of the declaration of the pandemic?
The numbers tell a grim story, with 185 deaths to date in the community.
There have been more than 6,300 cases, and while the majority have resolved the threat of a third wave is all too real, especially as the community is still adjusting to the end of the second wave.
Unlike a year ago there are now several variants that are threatening a new lockdown in the coming weeks.
However, where there is anxiety there is also hope.
Just twelve months ago the idea of a vaccine likely felt like a far off notion, but today it is a reality, with several now approved world wide and at home.
In London mass vaccination of the most senior populations has begun, and promises to ramp up in the coming weeks and months.
While a vaccine isn’t necessarily considered a “silver bullet” in terms of getting back to normal, it is a major piece.
Governments can not yet say exactly when that normal may return, but there is optimism for the future, so who knows where things may be in another year.
