Embrace The Change

A year of the global pandemic and mankind has finally managed to have an answer to the health crisis as the much-awaited vaccine sees the light of the day. After seeing phases of lockdowns, intermittent lifting of the same, most countries worldwide are welcoming the decisions of opening and restarting their economies, as life slowly returns to normal. It is a matter of pride to witness the support by the Leadership in Oman and the commitment by the society that has led to a considerable drop in the number of cases and reduction in mortality rates. After a long hiatus, Oman also opened to full working capacity across its government offices starting earlier this month, as The Supreme Committee dealing with the COVID-19 made the announcement after visible improvement was observed in the situation. As observed, the first day opened to 100 per cent working capacity indicating the sign of returning to normalcy. Both the management and the employees ensured that the work was resumed keeping the precautionary measures in mind and everyone adhered to wearing masks as well as maintaining social distance. The pandemic has caused much nuisance to the lives of everyone across the world and practically each one of us has been affected by it in some form. Murtadha al Lawati, AGM Head of Marketing and Corporate Communications at Alizz Islamic Bank, says, “We’ve viewed the pandemic as an interrupting nuisance to our lives, something we’d like to skip through, the way we scrub through TV commercials on a DVR. But at more than 250 days already, the pandemic isn’t a commercial to zip through; it’s the multi-part, multi-season series we’re being forced to binge-watch. No matter who we are, whether we take the pandemic seriously or live in benighted denial, our routines and customs have become dramatically altered. With economic loss, illness, death and uncertainty, how do we simply “go back to normal” after this? It’s difficult to think that we can sweep this under the rug, forget about it and emerge unchanged. As the Great Depression and World War II shaped the attitudes and psyches of our parents and grandparents, living with COVID-19 will shape us.” Change has become inevitable now. We, the most evolved species, are at large the best at adapting and we have started to live with it somehow. The technology, needless to say, has occupied a major part of our lives and it’s due to the technological advancements the mankind has made in last decades which has helped us sail through and cope up with the changes. With the announcement of the vaccine, the developments seem to have been consequential so far. “Globally with the news of vaccines getting approval in various countries and countries looking forward to first lots of vaccine imports, surely a sense of positivity is being seen in the environment. That said, social distancing, hand hygiene being practised by everybody has indeed seen awareness levels amongst people increase. Countries have been in a Catch 22 situation with tremendous pressure to bring back the economy on track. Oman with huge tourism potential is no exception to practically open almost all commercial establishments to ensure the aviation and hospitality sectors, one of the worst-hit sectors can see some recovery,” opines Nalin Chandna, CEO National Gas Company. “Fortunately, the opening up of the economy has not seen the infections multiplying whether or not the number of tests increased or not. This is evident in the hospitals and more importantly, the ICUs have not seen a spike in the new admissions. That said, with commercial establishments returning to 100 per cent capacity, each one of us continues to have that extra sense of consciousness to maintain social distancing, practice hand hygiene and continue to wear face masks since the risk of infections is still the same as it was about 8-9 months ago,” says Chandna. The definition of normal shall need some overhauling and it is going to be different than what mankind witnessed during the health crises in the past. It would not be the normal as we knew it, but the normal where we have adopted better hygiene practices, have evolved and learnt new ways of working, ways of communicating and even relating with one another. “Going back to our normal life that we have missed badly due to the pandemic has brought happy and positive vibes to everyone. Despite working from home, we missed the human interaction to work and celebrate as a team. Working from home has its positive and negative aspects. It was more productive with cutting cost when it comes to have meetings outside the organisations. Hopefully that this pandemic will be over soon, but we’ll definitely learn from all the lessons,” expresses Laila al Hadhrami, an Award-Winning Digital Transformation Expert. And as Martin Luther King Jr said, “Only in darkness we can see the stars.” The new year dawns upon us, and we welcome the positive change with open arms! Welcome 2021! Dr Priti Swarup @drpritiswarup@gmail.com