Impact Of Covid-19 On The Health And Well-Being Of People In Guwahati City: A Geographical Analysis

Abstract

Covid-19 pandemic, a global crisis has not only disrupted our everyday life but it has also fundamentally changed the way of living of the world. Although the outbreak of the pandemic originated in Wuhan city of China yet it spread to the rest of the world first impacting the megacities, and later within a month trickled down to the country sides through a process of hierarchical diffusion. In Guwahati the pandemic was hit mainly in two waves viz., the first wave of infection was brought by the attendees of Tablighi Jamaat from Delhi while the second wave were brought by the migrant workers from the worst affected cities in India. Guwahati being the gateway is the worst affected of all the cities in northeast India. As such the pandemic which only had 42 cases in the initial phase (March-April), began a slow increase at the end of May (lockdown 4.0) with 1391 cases and reached to its height of more than 7000 cases at the end of June. Today the situation is quite critical as we are in the midst of community spread of the disease while the cases are growing exponentially. This has not only endangered the life of many vulnerable social groups but it has also brought about numerous interrelated problems such as physical and mental health, slowing down of economy, increasing unemployment, disruption in education and administrative system and so on. Therefore, an attempt is made in this paper to find out the impact of the pandemic on health and well-being of people in Guwahati city