This article sums up a small part of the "Pandemic's impact on people's lives", which is a complex research study our experts have completed during the pandemic.
Introduction
The World Health Organization revealed on the 9th of January 2020 that the Chinese authorities had confirmed the pneumonia outbreak to be caused by a new Coronavirus.
The first case of Coronavirus was confirmed in Romania on February 26th 2020. By April 2020, the number of infections reached approximately 2000 cases per day, resulting in a sanitary catastrophe when the daily cases reached 10.000 infections per day in November 2020.
Since then, the entire world has sought to win this struggle which appears to be impossible, at least for the time being.
We chose to perform this research paper and see what the data can tell us, knowing how powerful our proprietary panels are and how much research might help us to comprehend the repercussions of the pandemic on the world, but also in Romania.
We chose to target people from Romania, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary and Poland and ran our data collection between September 29th and October 7th 2021.
The general impact of Covid on people's life
The social aspects of life were the first to be impacted. Travel restrictions, as well as the difficulties of maintaining a healthy body and mind, were also profoundly felt. People from the Czech Republic and Hungary, at least for the time being, seem to be able to cope a little better.
Greeks are the most impacted by travel impediments for both domestic and international travel and they seemingly can't wait to go out and enjoy themselves again.
Covid's impact on our work life
We have seen an important impact on other aspect of our life, such as our "work-life".
There are some differences in workers profiles, based on regional differences. Historically, the Czech Republic and Poland were industrial powerhouses in the region, while Greece is a more services-oriented economy (no wonder that it is a major tourist destination), and, accordingly, it felt the restrictions harder.
For most people doing office work, working on company premises is the only option.
People with purely remote work are the second largest category (not by much), the only exception being the Czech Republic, which has a hybrid work model. Maybe it's one of the factors helping the Czechs coping a bit better with Covid-induced stress.
Covid's impact on the schooling system
It's clear that online school is a band-aid, not a permanent solution. It serves its purpose for the time being, but people in all these 5 countries are not too happy about it. Hungarians are the most content, while in Romania, online school is inducing strongly polarized feelings.
The major issue with online school in the 3 Central European countries surveyed is the lack of interaction between the educational actors (teachers and students).
While Czechs and Hungarians feel the additional strain on parents more acutely, the are, on the other hand, more content with the logistical side.
Greeks and Romanians are more discontent with the logistical issue, and less so, apparently, with the strain on parents. It makes sense, as you can worry about the burden after you've solved the basic issues and the online school is working properly, not the other way around.
We invite you to follow us further to be up to date with the following articles that we will post based on the "deconstruced analysis" of our research study.