‘I feel lucky to be stuck in Jordan’

I have been staying in Jordan since the March 8, 2020. The reason why I came to Jordan is to do some interviews with refugees to gain a better understanding of their integration in the society for my PhD research. For the first time in my life, I had come to a country in the Middle East, so I was both nervous and excited. I was aware of the coronavirus outbreak, which began in Wuhan, China in December 2019.It has expanded to touch almost every corner of the world. The day when World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the COVID-19 as a pandemic, there was only one case in Jordan, while there was 456 cases and eight deaths in the UK where I am doing my PhD.

When the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, accepted that the country was facing the “worst public health crisis for a generation”, he only mentioned the “herd immunity approach” to fight against the coronavirus disease.While the UK government was delaying taking actions to prevent coronavirus spread in the country, the Jordanian government took many restrictions to fight against coronavirus. When the number of COVID-19 cases increased to 12 in Jordan on the March 15, a series of strict measures had been taken by the government. The first decision was to quarantine everyone who entered the country from March 10 for 14 days. In addition, the government announced that all educational institutions, including kindergartens, nurseries, universities, training institutions and institutes, are to be closed as of Sunday, March 15. The government also declared that all flights to and from Jordan will be suspended starting on Tuesday, March 17, until further notice. In addition to flight suspensions, all land and sea border crossings and airports were closed to passenger traffic. This was the day when I could not leave the country as all airports were closed.

While I was expecting the government to maybe loosen these restrictions, a new decision was announced on March 17, 2020. His Majesty KingKing Abdullah approved the activation of Defence Law No. 13 as part of efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus.A day after the decision of the King regards to activating Defence Law, Jordan went into an unprecedented lockdown on March 18. After four days of total lockdown, people were allowed to leave their homes to go out from 10 am to 6 pm. Obviously, even the wealthy and high-tech countries in different continents of the world today are clearly unprepared for the process. The curfew had been eased in Jordan, but almost everything was closed. Only small markets and pharmacies were open to allow people to buy their basic needs and medicine. Soldiers and police were patrolling in the city to make sure everyone obeys the rule.

Based on the number of coronavirus cases in Jordan, I can say that the government succeeded in managing the coronavirus crisis so far. Based on the WHO data, as of June 2, 2020, there were 746 cases, and only nine people died in Jordan.Whereas there had been 276,332confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK, with 39,045 deaths in total, as of the 2nd of June.I believe that if the UK government took serious restrictions at the beginning instead of applying the “herd immunity approach”, there would be less deaths due to the coronavirus.

Almost every day, a high number of people passed away in the UK; and the UK government has not paid attention to peoples' lives to control the coronavirus crisis. Johnson stated that “I must level with you, level with the British public, many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.” This discourse shows the reflection of the UK government on coronavirus crisis, and it is not surprising to see that the UK has the most number of people who passed away due to COVID-19 as of May 11.

One may assert that it does not make sense to compare these two countries as they are different one another based on the population, culture and socio-economic differences. Moreover, one may stress that it is not possible to learn how to cope with the COVID-19 issue from a non-Western country based on her/his Euro-centric approach. However, it is a fact that COVID-19 is under control in those countries that implement certain measurements to contain COVID-19 spread while they had a small number of COVID-19 cases.

Jordan is one of those countries which took coronavirus seriously when there was a small number of coronavirus cases, unlike the UK government. Hence, I feel lucky to be stuck in Jordan.