As we head into year three of the pandemic, things look a whole lot brighter than they did in March 2020.
Back then, most people wouldn’t have believed it would go on this long – March 11, 2022 marks two years of a global pandemic, and two years since Ottawa’s first confirmed case.
Much has changed between now and then. Two years ago we hadn’t even started wearing masks. Now, we’re a little over a week from being able to take them off again.
Two years seems like a lifetime ago.
“We have made the assessment that COVID-19 can be categorized as a pandemic,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director General of the World Halth Organization, on March 11, 2020.
TSN 1200 Senators color commentator Gord Wilson was one of the first Ottawa residents to test positive for the virus.
“The anxiety levels increased on a daily basis and back in 2020, test results were a long time in the making,” he said. “It took me 16 days.”
Wilson caught the virus after returning from a road trip with the Sens. Just days later, all major sports leagues shut down.
“It’s as dramatic of an impact on my life as I’ve ever had,” he said. “It’s shocking to think it has been two years since the start of the pandemic.”
Here is a timeline of how it all started in Canada:
- Jan. 25, 2020: Canada’s first COVID-19 case was declared, a Toronto man who had just returned from Wuhan, China.
- March 8. 2020: Canada recorded its first COVID-19 death, a man in his 80s who died in a Vancouver nursing home.
- March 11, 2020: The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. On the same day, Ottawa confirmed its first case.
Just days later, the first warning came from Ottawa’s medical officer of health, Dr. Vera Etches, to stay home.
What many thought would last a few weeks dragged into months, then years.
People stayed indoors, at times away from family and friends, and businesses closed up shop and needed government relief.
Then vaccines were developed in record time, giving hope, but no instant end to the pandemic.
“The vaccines truly changed the landscape. They changed COVID from a potentially lethal infection and totally defanged it,” said Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases specialist.
And so on the day it all changed in the capital, two years later, we’re just days away from dropping mask mandates and soon all public health measures will end.
By this summer, life might look normal. But it may never be the same.