Three years later: Lives reshaped by COVID-19

Today, three years ago, was the outbreak of the coronavirus declared a pandemic, a once-in-a-lifetime event that tested the limits of humanity.

Societies in lockdown, untold numbers of people hospitalized, school closures, lost jobs and the death of loved ones became routine in the lives of billions of people.

While many may want to forget the horrors of the pandemic, others continue to suffer the physical, emotional and financial consequences.

Al Jazeera spoke to five people from around the world to understand how COVID-19 has impacted and continues to impact their lives:

Farath Shba, Singapore

Zaheer was just 18 months old when he succumbed to COVID-19 in June 2022, becoming the first reported death from the virus of a child under 12 in Singapore.

After recording a temperature of nearly 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in the first few days of contracting COVID, Zaheer’s condition worsened.

He suffered severe seizures and was diagnosed with meningoencephalitis – a condition that leads to inflammation of the meninges and brain tissue. Zaheer was eventually put on life support after doctors stated his brain had stopped working.

“Sometimes in life you think you could have done better. I feel that when it comes to Zaheer’s passing. I still feel the anger,” Zaheer’s father Farath Shba told Al Jazeera from Singapore, holding back tears.

“That was very traumatizing… I wasn’t ready to let him go. Everyone told me to give up or prepare for the worst, but I just couldn’t,” said Shba.

Zaheer’s older brother Zayan, who is still a toddler, would constantly ask about him, their father said.

“I didn’t know how to tell him that his brother might not be coming home.”

On June 27, little Zaheer took his last breath.

“Nothing prepares you for the loss of a child,” Shba said.

“The first month or so was very difficult. My wife would wake up crying loudly at night… this happened for weeks,” he said.

Zayan too was overcome with grief when he discovered that his little brother was not coming home.

“He was very protective of him… he thought we had done something bad to him. He was going to hit me and my wife.

Nine months later, Shba says, the family is moving.

“We have not forgotten Zaheer. I still pray at his grave once a week,” the account manager revealed.

In addition, Shba says he avoids talking to Zayan about Zaheer, whose memories of his young brother are starting to fade.

“When he matures a bit, I will explain it to him. But for now I avoid bringing up his brother’s name,” he said.

Ana Gruszynski, Brazil

Ana Gruszynski says her life has been forever changed from the moment her 87-year-old mother was hospitalized with COVID-19 in August 2020.

After her mother died from the virus, Gruszynski — who was caring for her at the time — tested positive five days later, leading to pneumonia, neuropathy problems and a skin rash.

She is now one of millions of people suffering from the condition known as long COVID, a series of illnesses that can last weeks, months or even years for those who have contracted the coronavirus.

While her pneumonia eased a few weeks after she contracted COVID-19, Gruszynski said she soon began experiencing vertigo — a condition defined as “a feeling of being off balance,” and can lead to nausea, vomiting and vision problems.

“If I were to watch an online video session to teach or use my phone, I wouldn’t be able to see very well… I’d get very dizzy,” she said. “I thought maybe it was just stress since my mom had just passed away, but the symptoms just got worse.”

Gruszynski, a professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, said that while battling vertigo, she was also diagnosed with polyneuropathy — a condition that affects a person’s peripheral nerves, skin and muscles.

“Taking a shower felt awful,” she said.

“It hurt to put on clothes. I had to buy a special pillow and foam (for sleeping). It was really terrible.”

Her condition became so bad that she was forced to take time off from teaching in 2021 as she sought medical attention.

Finally, after more than a year of trying multiple remedies, Gruszynski was recommended medical marijuana to help her symptoms, which she said made a huge difference.

But her symptoms have not gone away completely.

“If I run too fast or the weather is too hot, I get tachycardia symptoms,” she said.

In July, the 56-year-old said she decided to take early retirement from her position at the university.

“I already had a desire to retire before COVID… but even (if) I wanted to continue, I couldn’t afford it,” she said. “I have trouble concentrating and am slower at completing tasks, which is incompatible… with the job demands of college professors.”

Nosipiwo Manona, South Africa

At the outbreak of the pandemic, former journalist Nosipiwo Manona had to quit her job for health reasons. Manona suffered from diabetes and was prone to severe complications from COVID. That’s why she chose to leave the job and industry she loved.

“My workplace expected me to actively work in the field during the height of the pandemic. But I just couldn’t take the risk,” Manona, a mother of four, told Al Jazeera.

“Losing my job was a bludgeon. Journalism has always been my first love and great passion.”

In November 2020, then 50 years old, Manona lost eight family members to the virus within weeks. Among the deceased were her parents and the father of her children.

“It was six weeks of pure horror,” she said in exasperation.

“When we host events like weddings or funerals, you need your relatives there, including your aunts and uncles. Today we are the family who now have to look for relatives to make that happen,” she said.

Manona explained how her former employer laid off hundreds of employees when the coronavirus hit, and how companies across South Africa downsized and were hesitant to rehire to this day.

Aside from some reporting opportunities, Manona revealed that she has become dependent on the generosity of her friends and relatives to make ends meet. She has no money to pay her children’s school fees or buy food.

“What’s really deadly is being a donor recipient when you’ve lived for so many years and are able to take care of yourself,” she said.

Often the pressure of providing for her family and the grief of losing loved ones “overwhelms her,” she added.

“I just go into the corner or take a walk to let it all out…I’ve been crying a lot for the past three years.”

Biboara Yinikere, Nigeria

“She is close to my heart,” says Biboara Yinikere of Mimi, her 11-year-old daughter with Down syndrome.

So, of course, when the pandemic hit, the 50-year-old said she was “very concerned” knowing that children with Down syndrome were more susceptible to severe respiratory illness.

While concerned about her daughter’s health, Yinkere said she was also affected by the disruption of Mimi’s education. When the schools closed during the lockdown, Yinkere had to become Mimi’s primary school.

“I did it for the first two months. It wasn’t easy,” says Yinkere, the founder of the NGO Engraced Ones.

Nevertheless, Yinkere admits that she could eventually get better at teaching Mimi, using “a lot of learning resources” to make sure she didn’t fall behind.

“She started to like the lessons more. At one point, she even reminded me that it was time to learn.

When Yinkere returned to work, Mimi resumed her education online and presented her mother with a new challenge.

“Due to her condition and level of education, she could not sit alone during the Zoom classes,” explains Yinkere.

While her siblings helped out for a short while, she eventually had to hire an outside tutor to help her daughter through the online classes. And that added to the concerns during the pandemic, she said.

“Of course I was terrified. With my children I have control over the (home) environment. But now I had someone who came from outside, with public transport.”

Yinkere’s advice to other parents with a special needs child is that everyone should lend a hand during a pandemic-like situation.

“Every family member needs to be involved on some level,” she said.

Mona Masood, USA

When American psychiatrist Mona Masood first pitched the idea of ​​starting an emotional support hotline for doctors on her Facebook page, she was surprised by the overwhelmingly positive response.

Encouraged by the feedback, Masood and four others launched the Physicians Support Line in April 2020 – where doctors, interns and medical students can ask for help anonymously.

The hotline’s experience, she said, gave her an “unparalleled perspective” on the mental and emotional turmoil faced by frontline workers during the pandemic.

A “buzzword thrown around was ‘burnout,'” she said, describing the pressures frontline staff faced during the pandemic.

“But it wasn’t, because that’s very ‘oh, you’re not cut out for this job,'” the 37-year-old explained to Al Jazeera.

According to Masood, moral injury was the more appropriate term to describe what health care workers faced. A term first used when war veterans were coming home.

“It wasn’t just that they had post-traumatic stress disorder, but they also questioned their morality — what they were doing in war zones, like collateral damage decisions, civilian deaths,” says Masood, who lives in Pennsylvania.

The same moral injury befell doctors during the pandemic, she noted.

“We have to decide who gets to live and die, to whom a (medical) device goes. We had limited medication. Who were we to decide who got what,” she recalled doctors saying at the time.

“People really struggled with what it meant to be a doctor — someone who took an oath to do no harm, but inevitably did harm because we didn’t have a system that gave us enough resources.”

Describing her own well-being in the three years since the outbreak, Masood said that while she could relate to her fellow doctors to some extent, she had come to accept “her own humanity”.

“It means I don’t have to have all the answers. I can accept that being human is imperfect,” she said.

“Embracing the imperfections allowed me to be there for others,” she added.

“I’m going to do my best, and sometimes my best will look different every day.”