Effects of COVID-19 on people with intellectual disabilities and the ICT’s role

Abstract

The pandemic affected the life of all humanity. When the pandemic hit the world in early 2020, support systems failed everywhere, eventually. A medical support, regardless of country, was not enough to deal with the pandemic and deaths (Andrews et al., 2020).Another area that affected lives was people's economic status. In the US, all the jobs created since the last recession disappeared within six weeks. Thus, the unemployment rate soared in just a few weeks, which not only collapsed the US economy but also made it difficult to take measures during the pandemic. Human contact has been reduced and people have been forced to stay at home as one of the health measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus. And this causes people a lot of stress and anxiety (Chaturvedi, 2020).Lack of awareness was another factor that made life worse for all mankind. People were asked to take security measures, but they were not allowed full access to them, and therefore, they did not know what to do. This caused panic as they knew their lives were in danger but did not know what to do about it (Gulati et al., 2020). COVID-19 has caused more than 700 thousand deaths worldwide so far. And this has made people live in terror and fear of death. This situation has caused them to repeatedly ask for help and fear that governments cannot handle a pandemic of this magnitude. This is the effect it has on the audience. The effects are even more severe for people with disabilities. They are more vulnerable than anyone else since they were already living at the mercy of other people and now those people are worried about their lives. Thus, this help was taken away from them, leaving them in the worst condition ever (Annaswamy et al., 2020).