This is my 13th day of strict quarantine and our fourth week of reduced movement. I walked to the corner of my street, two houses away, once in these 13 days. Other than that, all of us have been on lockdown inside our home.
I am going a bit stir crazy not being able to ride my bicycle! However, the extra time we are spending as a family is such a great gift. Yesterday we enjoyed a virtual dinner with our good friends in Romania, Claudiu and Vesna. We were best friends when we lived in Belgrade and we spent many a weekend afternoon and evening hanging out with each other. This quarantine has rekindled our friendship. During dinner, Owen and their son Marc had a Rubix Cube competition (see video above) and Owen afterwards, in true Kralovec form, entertained us by jumping into our pool twice. This is after heavy snows on Wednesday night! As I write this, it is 64 F / 18C with a cool breeze and rain forecasted for this evening. Oliver and I am bonding over daily games of table tennis. He is growing every day and is now much larger than me. Ocean and I had a nice talk in bed last night after her and Nadia watched the movie, Little Women. I woke up after the movie ended and we talked and talked in bed. She is such a good person!
The number of confirmed cases continues to rise to 639 (see my chart below) with over 70,000 people tested. The WHO and Uzbek Ministry of Health have been working closely together and I am generally impressed with the measures the government is taking. Tashkent is almost on a total lockdown with severe restriction on cars, bicycles and pedestrians. There is a police desk on my street that checks everyone walking by. We are all waiting for the next government announcement as this current set of restrictions is in force until April 20. Many people expect it to continue. One of the challenges here as in many places in the world is the lack of testing. Uzbekistan has a population of over 32 million, means less than 1% of the country’s population has been tested so far (70,000). They are rightly focusing on people with symptoms and contacts of those people. Only 3 deaths have been reported. I notice more people are now thinking about how to go back to normal social conditions. A good sign!
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