By Usman Khan

It is an established fact now, that the global pandemic of COVID-19 is an ever seen human health catastrophe across the world after world war 11; this crisis has severely affected the economy, education, industry, and development of mankind, killing thousands, rendering millions of the people jobless including the labors, beyond the world imagination. The ever-increasing food uncertainty, growing divergence, polarization, rising-falling mistrust of public institutions and leaders are the causes, ensuing from the pandemic.

The economic downgrading caused by the pandemic resulted in municipalities receiving down-to-earth lower tax revenues in different spheres like sales tax, hotel taxes, and income taxes. The civic sector is facing increased costs of daily life items besides, public health expenses associated with the current pandemic environment.

It is also an open truth that the world experienced unity and liberality between communities of the countries, and sectors during the pandemic as; the crisis has forced and obliged the world to tackle the gigantic task and challenge of controlling and curing the pandemic collectively. It means that collectively matters and can address a lot of great tragedies of the world. The dangers of COVID-19 which is still, looming on us, need too much cure before it eradicated forever.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on the most susceptible and marginalized communities around the world including laborers along with poverty-stricken women and girls besides, people of every race, color, sect, and religion. According to the UN, the pandemic has led to the world’s workers losing more than 10% of their income, or $3.5 trillion in the first three quarters of 2020, compared with the same period in 2019. It is estimated that COVID-19 will push quite 71 million people into extreme poverty.

In this way, the first step is to provide equitable access to diagnostics, vaccines, and treatments to the people of underdeveloped countries. The Access to COVID-19 tools (ACT) Accelerator and COVAX facility provides the best road access to ensure people everywhere in the world with the same opportunity available to benefit from the incredible medical breakthroughs against COVID-19 onward. This pandemic won’t end anywhere if it isn’t ended in the countries with low income because the possibility of human carriers is always there.

COVID-19 is “the worst humanitarian crisis year since the beginning of the United Nations,” The numbers look dreadful and according to a UN survey, a record 235 million people needed humanitarian assistance and protection, a near 40% increase from 2020, which was already the highest figure in decades. The worse, we are seeing crisis levels of hunger across large swaths of Africa and the Middle East.

In addition, the UN estimates that hardships resulting from COVID-19 will drive 13 million more girls to marry before the age of 18. What kind of message does that send to young girls everywhere? Even the abundant hospital-blue masks are bizarrely designed to fit a man’s face, not a woman’s — despite 70% of health care workers are women. Gender inequality is “the unfinished business of our time.” An uphill task and challenge for humanity in the time to come.

Enough space should provide for fair and more inclusive opportunities to pay closer attention to intersectional inequalities that COVID-19 has highlighted. For example, LGBTQ people of color are more likely than white LGBTQ people to possess had their working hours cut during the pandemic — only one reminder of how the impacts of COVID-19 are complex if, you bear inequality in multiple ways.

Another area of mushrooming inequality is education, which should be the central equalizer. With classrooms going remote or shifting online, half of the world’s population, lacking basic amenities, access to internet connection or computer, is put at an unfair disadvantage, one that will only worsen over time, if not tackled tactfully. According to the World Bank, 1.6 billion students were out of school due to the peak of the pandemic in April 2020. In low- and middle-income countries alone, 24 million children and youths may drop out or not have access to school in the current year of 2021. The school closures and disruptions caused by the pandemic excessively affected students of different colors. That’s why we can’t let COVID-19 to create a “vacuum of communication” among variant classes of people.

The Pandemic is becoming a source of vast ecological crisis as ecosystems are collapsing, biodiversity is disappearing, and oceans are acidifying. Even though there is a slowdown in economic activity due to the pandemic. We cannot escape the cumulative effect of generations of unchecked human activity or even able to afford a return to our pre-pandemic emanation trajectory. The greater preparedness and cooperation against the next pandemic, or working together to tackle the climatic crisis, dismantle inequality and racism in all their maleficent forms, or building peace in order to people can achieve their dreams is obligatory and need of the hour for us as a world community.

A ray of hope has been raised for the emergence of multilateralism. We have done it before right at the end of the Second World War when nations, collapsed and come together to create the United Nations, with the U.S. at the head of the table. The world witnessed more than four decades ago to eradicate smallpox, and again to close the ozone hole. And again in 2015, all nations came together at the UN to sign on to the collective promise of the SDGs — and the Paris Agreement So, let’s not give up our joint efforts in 2021 to free the world from all kinds of diseases including COVID-19 pandemics in bid to make it beautiful for all creatures of Almighty GOD. The perception and imagination are that in 2021 social movements, strong political will, financial necessity, and collective human responsibility altogether will give us the momentum to transform and change the world and bring about equalities for everyone living on the planet of earth.